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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



fits g)tar m tfje Cast 

A STUDY IN THE EARLY ARYAN 
RELIGIONS 



BY 



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LEIGHTON PARKS 

RECTOR OF EMMANUEL CHURCH, BOSTON 



Children of men ! the unseen Power, whose ejre 

Forever doth accompanY mankind, 
Hath looked on no religion scornfully 
That man did ever find. 

Which has not taught weak wills how much they can. 
Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain, 
Which has not cried to sunk, self weary man : 
Thou must be born again I 

Matthew Arnold. 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 



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^^ 



Copyright, 1887, 
By LEIGHTON PARKS. 

Ml rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press^ Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Ca 



To 

THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER, 

MAKTIN PHILLIPS PARKS, D. D. 

IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED. 



PEEFAOE. 



The substance of this book was first embodied 
in a course of Lectures, delivered before the Low- 
ell Institute in the winter of 1885, on " Christian- 
ity and the early Aryan Religions." Since then 
the work has been carefully revised and consider- 
able matter added, — much of it of a nature not 
fitted for such an occasion, — specially that part 
in the last chapter which relates to the future of 
the Church, inasmuch as any criticism of Christians 
of any particular name would have been improper 
in a series of lectures in an institution avowedly 
unsectarian. I have also modified in some respects 
opinions expressed at that time in regard to the 
influence of Persian thought upon Hebrew theol- 
ogy, my studies since having led me to feel that 
certain statements, though probably true, could not 
be easily verified. 

The invitation to deliver these lectures induced 
me to attempt to put in some systematic order 
thoughts which had long been exercising my mind 



4 PREFACE. 

and employing my leisure moments. This must be 
my apology for entering upon such a study without 
the knowledge of Oriental languages which would 
enable one to make original research. The task 
which I set before me was not so ambitious as the 
title of the Lectures might seem to imply. The trans- 
lations of the Sacred Books of the East, edited by 
Professor F. Max Miiller, can be found in all large 
libraries, and make it possible for any one who 
has the time and taste for such studies to become 
familiar with the thoughts and hopes and fears of 
the men of old. If I can lay claim to any advan- 
tage in such studies, it must be in an interest awak- 
ened some ten or twelve years ago when, traveling in 
the East with my friend Mr. R. B. Bowler, of Cincin- 
nati, I had an opportunity to see the outward life of 
the people of China, Japan, and India, and to talk 
with men who still held to the faith of their fathers. 
I met with too many men in Japan " given to hos- 
pitality," I heard too many stories of the unswerving 
rectitude of Chinese compradors, I found too many 
examples of the profound and serious thought of 
men in India, not to return impressed with the great 
truth that ''in every nation, he that feareth God is 
accepted of Him." And the result of this experience 
was that in reading the Vedas and the Upanishads 
and the Sutras and the Zend-Avesta, I have never 



PREFACE. O 

thought of them as dead books, but as that which 
has been the staff o£ life to " living, breathing, 
thinking men." 

It may be that these experiences have fitted me in 
some sort to write a book which, without any pre- 
tense to learning, will nevertheless help some who 
have been perplexed by the many problems which 
arise from the consideration of God's dealing with 
his children. Among such there are none whom I 
would be so glad to help as the young student of the- 
ology, who perhaps has found that such questions 
are not congenial to the lecture-room of the seminary. 
There may be some who, without venturing to apply 
to themselves St. Paul's words, yet have experienced 
his disappointment, " They who were of repute im- 
parted nothing to me, but contrariwise ! " It may 
be that they shall find here at least the sympathy 
for which they long. 

The questions considered here have a direct bear- 
ing on the problem of missions to the heathen, — 
questions which are coming to the front with star- 
tling rapidity. Before these can be answered, it 
is necessary that we should be clear in our own 
minds as to what is meant by " the heathen." An 
examination of this will lead us to see that they 
differ as we do, and that there is no ready-made 
method by which they can be converted to Christ, 



b PREFACE. 

and that no plan can succeed which does not begin 
in the faith that God has already been making his 
voice heard, and that they only can understand the 
words of Christ who have listened to that voice.^ The 
problem of missions, then, will be found to run up, 
like every great spiritual problem, into the one ques- 
tion : " What think ye of the Christ ? " All went 
well as long as the moral sense of mankind did not 
revolt from the dogma that every soul that had not 
heard the gospel should be damned. But no man can 
be found who believes that to-day. By what rule then, 
shall they be judged ? By what used to be called 
the light of natural reason, while we who have heard 
shall be judged by the revelation of the Bible ? This 
might do if we were asking questions about a king 
who has no personal interest in his subjects, but not 
when the question is concerning the dealing of a 
Father with his children. Then we must begin with 
the faith that He has been speaking to his children 
all along, and that their sin, like ours, consists in 
not obeying that gracious voice. Call it the natural 
reason if you will, but do not say that it differs in 
kind from revelation, or you will have asserted that 
of the Father which will be the strongest proof that 
He is no Father ; for a Father wants the salvation of 
every child, and must be giving all the time to each 

1 St. John viii. 43. 



PREFACE. 7 

child all the knowledge and all the grace that the 
child is capable of receiving. 

It is the record of that revelation to which this 
book desires to call attention. It is a dreadful 
thing for any minister of Him who said, " They shall 
come from the East and from the West and sit down 
in the kingdom of God," to slander those who are 
coming, for in so doing they " speak a word against 
the Holy Ghost " who has been leading them. 

There is another class to whom I venture to hope 
that this book may appeal, and that is those who 
are asking with deep searchings of heart, " Art thou 
he that should come^ or do we look for another ? " 
That they have been led to ask this question as the 
result of the sudden awakening to the fact that the 
Bible is not the limit of revelation, I am sure ; it may 
be that a study of some of the great religions will 
show them that this is truer than they have dared 
to admit, and yet at the same time make them feel 
that it is none the less true that " salvation is of 
the Jews." 

1 have not been free from an author's perplexity as 
to references to books to which he is indebted. I had 
thought of printing a list of all the works consulted 
in the preparation of this book, but to the scholar it 
would seem very short, and to the unlearned it would 



8 PREFACE. 

have no meaning. I have therefore contented myself 
with indicating the books from which quotations are 
made. The facts stated here can be easily verified, 
and the opinions must stand or fall by the judgment 
of the reader. To such a storehouse of learning 
as Dr. James Freeman Clarke's " Ten Great Reli- 
gions" I have of course paid frequent visits; but 
the two books to which I am specially indebted — 
not so much perhaps in their relation to this work, 
as in their general influence upon my mind, predis- 
posing me to look at things as I do — are, Cousin's 
*' Lectures on Modern Philosophy," and " The Reli- 
gions of the World," by that master in theology, 
Maurice. 

Emmanuel Church, Boston. 
Epiphany^ 1887. 



COI^TENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

Evidences of Christianity. — Paley's position. — Miracles. 
— Prophecy. — Recent objections. — Christianity and 
Civilization. — Revelation. — What is originality ? — 
Eclecticism. — The relation of the ethnic religions to 
Christ's religion 13 



CHAPTER n. 

VEDAISM. 

Periods in Indian History. — The Yedas. — The gods. — 
Kathenotheism. — Asura. — Universality of the Divine. 
— Kindness of the gods. — Christ's justification of Ve- 
daism. — Weakness of Vedaism 27 



CHAPTER III. 

BRAHMANISM. 

Rise of caste. — New Vedas. — Brahmanas. — Laws of 
Manu. — Ritual. — Upanishads. — Sat. — Atman. — 
Brahma. — Brahmanism and the gospel. — Sacrifice 
divine. — Need of atonement. — Fatal weakness of 
Brahmanism 57 



10 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 

Mimansa. — Nyaya. — Kapila. — Vedanta. — Lessons of 
religious history 93 



CHAPTEE V. 

BUDDHISM. 

Divisions of Buddhism. — Life of the Buddha. — - The 
great renunciation. — Buddha's teaching. — The exist- 
ence of pain. — Cause of sorrow. — " The Way." — 
The Skandhas. — Kamma. — Faith. — lutelligence. — 
Nirvana. — Secret of Buddhism 103 



CHAPTER YI. 

CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 

Kindred legends in both. — Christian and Buddhist moral- 
ity, caste, almsgiving, forgiveness of injuries. — Saint 
and missionary. — Buddhist philosophy and Christian 
theology. — Sorrow. — The Skandhas and the Incarna- 
tion. — Christ's revelation of personality. — Kamma 
and the cross of Christ. — The power of faith. — Nir- 
vana and the Christian Heaven. — Buddhist pessimism 
and Christian hope. — Progress dependent upon knowl- 
edge of God 145 



CHAPTER YIL 

HINDUISM. 

Indian Theism. — Return to the Vedas. — The Maha- 
Bharata. — Shiva. — Shaivism. — Vishnu. — Vaishnuism. 
— Avatara. — The Incarnation 178 



CONTENTS. 11 



CHAPTER YIII. 

ZOROASTRIANISM. 

The Parsis. — The Zend-Avesta. — Bactria. — The first 
religious schism. — Zoroaster. — Prayer. — Inspiration. 

— The gods. — Truth and purity. — Moral struggle. 

— Relation of Zoroastrianism to Judaism. — The Medes. 

— Fall of Nineveh. — The Captivity. — Cyrus. — In- 
fluence of Persian thought. — The Synagogue. — Per- 
sonal responsibility. — Inspired writings. — Dualism. — 
Influence on Christian thought. — The absent God. — 
Importance of purity. — The Resurrection 201 

CHAPTER IX. 

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 

Review. — The Catholic Church a new thought. — Why 
is not the world Christian ? — Influence of the Roman 
Empire. — Incursion of the barbarians. — Medijevalism. 

— The Reformation. — Dogmatism. — Institutionalism. 

— Sectarianism. — Unity. — Saint Paul the ideal mis- 
sionary. — Power of sympathy 243 

CHAPTER X. 

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST' S RELIGION. 

Influence of physical science. — Science of comparative 
religions. — Failure of Christian nations to realize their 
calling. — Future of humanity. — The evolution of 
morality. — From what to what ? — Humanitarian 
morality. — Need of hope. — The real dangers. — The 
lesson of history. — The Brahmo Somaj. — Wise men in 
the East 267 



HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

The purpose of this short study in the early- 
Aryan religions is to call attention to the witness 
that they bear to man's need of the gospel, and to 
show that that need has been answered, just in so far 
as any people, or rather any individual, was prepared 
to receive it. The assumption that the heathen 
once had a perfect revelation which they deliber- 
ately rejected is far more likely to " cut the nerve 
of missions " than any theory of the mercy which 
" endureth forever ; " while the belief that God 
has neglected the larger part of his children will 
justify men in neglecting them too. But such a posi- 
tion, if once taken by the Church, would lead to a 
theory of Election, which must harden into a Phari- 
seeism, which is the '' middle wall " which Christ 
came to break down. 

The title of the book expresses the thought with 
which this study began and which subsequent re- 
search has deepened, that the " Light which light- 
eth every man that cometh into the world " has 
been seen in the East, and that the true way to 



14 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

make disciples of all nations is by declaring unto 
them Jesus as Agni, Brahma, Buddha, or Sosios, 
as He was first declared to the Jew as the Christ. 
So considered, the religions of the world become 
the great " Evidences of Christianity," that is, of 
Christ. 

That there is need of such study seems evident 
enough ; for whatever may have been the merits of 
the old standards in this department, their usefulness 
is a thing of the past. That exceedingly interest- 
ing book, "The Evidences of Christianity," by Paley? 
would hardly be referred to to-day in an argument 
with a skeptic. And the reason is simple enough : 
Paley's book was written to refute the popular ob- 
jection of his day, that Christianity was the inven- 
tion of priests. " No," said Paley, impostors could 
not work miracles ; the disciples worked miracles and 
thereby proved that what they said was true. Jesus 
worked miracles and thereby proved that He came 
from God. Ergo, Christianity was not an invention 
of impostors. We can scarcely refrain from smiling 
at the naivetS of his argument, yet it was sufficient 
for such an absurd objection. But it is unfortunate 
that the argument was ever used against any op- 
ponents save those against whom the sturdy Arch- 
deacon aimed it ; for it has no force as against men 
who feel, with Hume, that a miracle is intrinsi- 
cally so improbable that no evidence is sufficient 
to prove it. 

A second argument — what might be called the in- 
tellectual miracle, as opposed to the physical mira- 
cles — was found in the literal fulfillment of ancient 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 15 

prophecies in the events recorded in the Gospels. 
But the new science of Biblical criticism has shown 
that there is no such literal agreement as we fondly 
supposed. 

Higher ground was taken by the great Bishop But- 
ler, when he said that the proof of the truth of the 
gospel was found in the willingness of the Apostles 
to die in the assertion that what is there recorded is 
true. But we know now that SS. Peter and Paul 
were both dead before the Gospels were written, and 
that there is no proof that any Apostle died assert- 
ing the truth of the gospel record. And even if it 
be said that when the " gospel " is spoken of the 
great saving truths, and not the record, is meant, 
the answer has been that, even so, the death of, any 
witness only proves Ms belief in that which he as- 
severates. And therein lay the weakness of all this 
great theologian's argument in the second part of 
the " Analogy." He was influenced by the atmos- 
phere in which he wrote. It was a time when Chris- 
tianity was spoken of as a " system," — something 
finished long ago and sent into the world, in which 
men ought to express a " belief " as the result of a 
careful weighing of probabilities, with a careful eye 
to the result in case of error. Such a good man as 
Dr. Johnson, for instance, was forever talking about 
Christianity, as we might talk about the pyramids, — 
as something that existed outside of England, in 
which he believed because a traveler in whom he 
had confidence told him that he had seen it ! And 
that was the more remarkable in his case, for he had 
heard Wesley proclaim the presence of the unseen 



16 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

King, of the God who had revealed his son in him^ 
and caused the light of the gospel to shine in his 
heart. Methodism was the inevitable reaction from 
the deism within and without the Church. Its 
immense superiority to what preceded it is now ac- 
knowledged by all ; the advances from the position 
of Paley are not so readily acknowledged, but they 
are no less great. Hume's dictum concerning mira- 
cles has done nothing to discredit the miraculous, 
but it has made it necessary to think of miracles 
as the natural effects of a supernatural character, 
rather than as a proof of a divine mission. And 
when we say that, we mean that Jesus is known to 
be the Christ, not after having been kept stand- 
ing in the antechamber while his credentials were 
examined, but by the majesty to which all that is 
worthy in humanity bends the knee. 

The new thought about prophecy is nothing less 
than the recovery of the higher ground on which the 
Apostle stood who wrote, " the testimony of Jesus is 
the spirit of prophecy." The presence of the pro- 
phetic spirit in us is the bond of sympathy by which 
we are able to recognize the outlines of the ideal man 
of whom each prophet drew some feature, until we 
find them all fulfilled and transfigured in the char- 
acter of the Son of man. 

For Paley and Butler and other great and good 
men to write in answer to the objections of their day 
was to do a work for which the Church can never be 
too grateful, but for us to use such arguments to-day 
is a mark of skepticism. It is as if a man were to say 
Michael Angelo did succeed in making the dome of 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 17 

St. Peter's float in the liquid air, and yet all the 
time was building a scaffolding outside it to keep it 
from falling down. It does float, or it does n't. 
If it does, it will assert its origin from genius ; and 
if it does not, both it and the scaffolding will fall. 

And that is why the old text-books are no longer 
useful ; we have come to feel that the effort to prove 
Christianity divine is like an effort to prove the 
virtue of one's mother. A man believes himself to 
be the son of his reputed father, but in the nature 
of the case proof is impossible. The truth and love 
and purity and goodness that are forever associated 
with his mother's character make any other supposi- 
tion impossible. And so it is that " Evidences of 
Christianity," as the word is popularly understood, 
are impossible ; for Christianity is only a scholastic 
term for that which Jesus called the Kingdom of 
God, which He said was within us, that is, the 
Christ spirit. The man who has the assurance of 
the spirit know^s that it came forth from God, and 
the man who has it not cannot be convinced by ar- 
gument. But illustrations of its power and deep 
meaning will be found in every age and in each in- 
dividual in which it has been felt. This spirit is 
like what we call the vital force of nature. Proofs 
of vegetable life having once existed in the Arctic 
regions may be found in the fossil remains of plants 
and flowers. No proof of this force is needed in 
the tropics, yet illustrations of its myriad fantastic 
forms may be found year after year, and viewed 
with new interest by all lovers of nature. And so 
it is with the living power of Christianity. If we 



18 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

would know what form it took in the historic life of 
Jesus, we may study the Gospels. If we wish to see 
its power working in the lives of the Apostles, we 
have the Acts and the Epistles ; but if we wish to 
see how it works to-day, we must look to the life of 
General Gordon, a free man in his desert prison; 
to the heroism of our own countrymen, who in the 
long arctic night had light in all their dwellings, and 
in their hunger were fed with the bread of life ; to 
the patience of those whom Keble called the " pillars 
of the Church," the poor, who in garret and in cellar 
are waiting for the descent of the heavenly city. It 
is with such illustrations — or evidences — that the 
Christian pulpit is dealing week after week; but 
something more seems to be needed, and to that I 
have ventured to apply myself. 

There are two popular objections urged against 
Christianity, neither of them inspired by a hatred of 
it, but rather the expression of a feeling that it — a 
thing which has done and may do good in the world 
— is hindered by the extravagant claims of its igno- 
rant disciples. The first of these objections is against 
that claim which asserts that modern civilization is 
the result of the preaching of the freedom of the 
sons of God. " Modern civilization," it is said, " is 
a mighty power, which would have been essentially 
what it is without the religion of Christ. It would 
have evolved a religion had not that of the Galilean 
been at hand convenient for the purpose." This ob- 
jection was considered a few years since by that dis- 
tinguished orator, Dy. Richard Storrs, when he held 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 19 

great multitudes of people spellbound by the magic 
of his rhetoric, and drew a picture of society in 
Greece and Rome before the coming of Christ,^ — 
which if to some it appeared in somewhat darker 
colors than could be always verified, was still dark 
enough to show what another century must have 
brought forth ; and then turned to the world of to- 
day, — which, if far from realizing the seer's vision 
of the Heavenly Jerusalem, still shows the influence 
of the new spirit which came with Jesus Christ. 

The second objection deals with the origin of 
Christianity. " Christianity," it is said, " can no 
longer claim to be a revelation, for there is no such 
thing as revelation. Every nation has evolved a 
religion colored by the circumstances by which the 
nation was surrounded. Nor is that all ; Christian- 
ity must now forego even its claim to originality^ 
for all students of the ethnic religions know that 
Christianity is a system of eclecticism, the frag- 
ments of which may be found scattered from the 
Yellow Sea to the steppes of Tartary, from the 
Himalayas to the Nile." ^ 

Now to the first objection, that there is no such 
thing as revealed religion, it is sufficient to answer 
that all religion wherever it may be found, with 
whomsoever associated, is revealed. Religion, the 
binding of the soul of man to the Spirit of God, 
whether we find the fruit of it in the pure contem- 
plation of Confucius, or the sweet mysticism of 

^ The Divine Origin of Christianity indicated by its Historical De- 
fects. By Richard S. Storrs, D. D., LL. D. 
2 Evolution and Christianity^ by Yorke. 



20 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Buddha, or the wrapt vision of Isaiah, is the same, 
coming, like " every good and perfect gift, from 
above." "It is born not of flesh, nor of the will 
of man, but of God." But that religion we speah 
of as most fully revealed^ which most perfectly re- 
veals — a religion which brings to man such a vision 
of God's character as to change his relation to God, 
to man, to nature, to life and to time, satisfying 
and fulfilling what the human consciousness has wit- 
nessed to as the fundamental instincts of the human 
heart, — such a religion so exceeds all others in the 
degree of its revelation as almost to justify us in 
speaking of it as different in kind, as the only re- 
vealed religion. That this is the religion of Jesus 
we assume. It may be that a serious study of some 
of the great religions of the world will show that 
assumption to be one which no thoughtful man need 
be ashamed to confess. 

The other objection, that Christianity lacks origi- 
nality, has had perhaps greater influence than any 
objection urged in our day. When it has once been 
asserted it seems so easy to find illustration of it, 
it seems so in harmony with the great law of devel- 
opment, that few ask themselves if the supposed 
illustrations throw light on the subject, and fewer 
still if the law of evolution does not show that when 
an original type appears other types begin to dis- 
appear. When the new type man appeared, many 
old types ceased to exist, and all evolution of new 
physical types ceased, and man showed himself a 
creature linked to the past, and yet having that 
which the past had never seen, the power to super- 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 21 

intend his own future development and modify it 
in accordance with his own sense of the fitness of 
things. In other words, man came on the stage of 
life as a creator.^ 

We start with a like assumption (which it is not 
the province of this book to prove), — that the reli- 
gion of the Son of man, while it has its roots in the 
past religious consciousness of men — specially of 
Israel — has also an element in it which the past 
cannot explain. 

But what, after all, is originality ? Surely it is 
something more than a question of chronology, oth- 
erwise Shakespeare can lay no claim to it. For the 
plots of a large part of his plays were drawn from 
Italian originals which had passed through the me- 
dium of the French romances, of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, or from older English plays ; yet no one will 
deny that in the truest sense of the term, the '' Mer- 
chant of Venice," " Othello," and " Hamlet " are 
original plays. And the reason is this : the test of 
originality is not to be found so much in the origin 
of a work, if one may so say, as in the original 
effect produced. An old truth set in a new light, 
or shown to belong to some deeper principle, is as 
truly original as the first enunciation of it is an iso- 
lated fact. 

Those who assert that Christianity is a system of 
eclecticism have not considered, I venture to say, 
either what eclecticism is or what its effect is. 

Cousin's ''Lectures on Modern Philosophy," for 
instance, are an example of eclecticism. '' Material- 

^ See The Destiny of Man, by John Fiske. 



22 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

ism, Idealism, Mysticism, and Skepticism, these are 
the four forms that philosophy is perpetually taking," 
says this delighf ul lecturer. '' There is truth in 
each ; combine those truths and you have the ulti- 
mate philosophy." Well, we ask after reading him, 
what is the central truth into which these partial 
truths are to fit? And the answer is, "the philo- 
sophic spirit of eclecticism." But that is no truth at 
all. It is simply a state of mind, and what is more, 
a state of mind that is destined to react against 
itself into the narrowest dogmatism. 

Again, eclecticism is only fitted to produce men 
" sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It 
could never have produced a Paul. Now apply either 
of these tests to the religion of Christ and they will 
fail. Jesus had no such knowledge of the religious 
systems of the world as to deliberately form an 
eclectic system. " True," say our objectors, '' but 
Palestine was full of every sort of doctrine. Bud- 
dhist monks and Parsee priests, Egyptian magi- 
cians and Hebrew rabbis met in Alexandria, and 
Antioch, and probably in Jerusalem. It was impos- 
sible that Jesus should not have been unconsciously, 
and his later disciples consciously, influenced by 
these conflicting doctrines. The morality of the 
Sermon on the Mount had been preached by Confu- 
cius and Buddha, and the so-called ' Lord's Prayer ' 
is a compilation from rabbinic sources." Now in 
regard to the relation of Christian to Buddhistic 
morality we shall speak in another chapter ; suffice it 
to say here that the originality of Christ's morality 
is not to be sought for in any enunciation of a new 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 23 

duty, so much as in the concentration of all duty 
into the passion of love. And the object of that 
love is to be found not in an abstract principle, but 
in the living God, whose character is essentially like 
that of Jesus ; and in our fellow-man made like Jesus 
and so like God. Jesus revealed sin, not as indul- 
gence in pleasure, nor the violation of a written 
code, but as the ungrateful violation of the sweet 
reasonableness of human nature in which God our 
Father is well pleased. 

Jesus satisfies, then, the first test of originality by 
revealing one fundamental principle into which the 
morality of humanity can fit. 

He satisfies also the second test. He has placed 
old truths in such a new light that they are essen- 
tially new. Thus, take but one petition of the Lord's 
Prayer. What did " Our Father, Vv^ho art in Heaven," 
mean on the lips of the rabbis ? It meant a Being 
who dwelt above the visible vault of heaven, caring 
for that remnant of the seed of Abraham which 
kept the ceremonial law as expounded by the scribes. 
But on the lips of the Christian, it means, in the 
light of the Incarnation, the Spirit in whom we live 
and move and have our being, who dwells in the 
heaven of purity and peace and joy which is " about 
our path and about our bed," and who creates and 
guides and loves every child of man who is born into 
the world. That is the originality of Jesus. Such 
an illumination of the original instincts of man's 
spiritual nature as to enable him to take out of his 
treasures old things, and behold, they become new ! 
The relation which his teaching, or rather his rev- 



24 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

elation of himself, bore to the teachings of other 
men was like the relation of the ocean to the streams 
which irresistibly flow into it. Each little stream 
and rivulet, each mighty river and placid bay, brings 
its own force ; each inlet has its own eddy ; but they 
do not make the ocean. It absorbs them all and 
then flows back, filling them with new life and power. 
So is it with the religion of the Christ. It sweeps 
by the turbid rivers and vast bays of heathenism and 
claims kinship with them, fulfilling and purifying 
them. 

Has its effect on life been original, or not ? That 
question has, as has been already said, been well 
answered by the distinguished divine to whose work 
we referred. The object of this book is quite differ- 
ent. It is hoped to show by this study that evi- 
dences of Christianity, or rather, illustrations of the 
truth of Christianity, are to be found in the great 
ethnic religions. 

How can that be best done ? How can Christianity 
be proved to be the catholic, the universal religion ? 
for if that can be done, if it can be shown that the 
religion of Christ contains the desire of humanity, 
as manifested in the religions of the world, our task 
will have been completed. 

Let us take an illustration that may make our 
purpose clearer. Suppose a farm of many fields : 
suppose there be one field that we believe to be all 
that can be desired ; suppose it be objected that each 
field of the farm has its own advantages, how could 
we prove the chosen one to be the best ? We might 
begin by pointing out deep buried rocks in one, un- 



THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 25 

destroyed stumps in another, a third might be de- 
clared too marshy to produce a crop, — and so we 
might make the round of the farm, and prove the 
first field best by comparing its advantages with 
the disadvantages of all the others. This method is 
one that seems to commend itself to some who think 
they are the defenders of the faith. It is, alas ! the 
prevailing note in most meetings held to advocate 
missions, and perhaps it is the most effective for 
getting money — once ; but it must not be used too 
often ; there is a point beyond which faithful Chris- 
tian people will not go, and where the voice of the 
scoffer will be heard. " Why try to prove the love 
of God," it will be said, " to nations whom, on 
your own showing, God has left from the creation 
until now in darkness?" Is it not time that the 
orthodoxy which would magnify the moral grandeur 
of the ethnic religion of Moses and the Catholic re- 
ligion of Jesus by depressing the religions of India, 
China, and Egjrpt, be declared heresy against the 
written as well as the unwritten gospel? Surely 
there must be another way, and — to return to our 
illustration of the farm — if we began by pointing 
out the excellence of each field in turn, and then 
showed the same excellence in the first, the first 
field would have been shown to be supremely su- 
perior to any of the others in degree ; but if in ad- 
dition it could be shown that the first field had any- 
thing more than all the others, then its excellence 
would have been shown to be different in hind. 
This, then, is what it is hoped this book will do : 
first, point out the excellence of each religion which 



26 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

is considered, and then show that the religion of 
Christ has the same ; secondly, to show that over 
and above the excellent things which may be found 
elsewhere, there is that in the gospel which " eye 
saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not 
into the heart of man," but which God hath revealed 
in the life of Jesus the Christ. 

The religions considered here are those in which 
that branch of the human family known as the Ar- 
yan lived and died. Strictly speaking, the Aryan 
religions include those of India and Persia before 
the Mohammedan conquest, Greek, Roman, and 
Teutonic mythologies. But this book will treat only 
of the religions of India, or what may be called the 
early Aryan. 



CHAPTER II. 

VEDAISM. 

The religious history of India divides itself into 
four periods, viz. : I. The Vedic ; II. The Brah- 
manic ; III. The Buddhist ; and IV. The Hindu. 

The Vedic cannot easily be separated from the 
Brahmanic, because the one flowed by an unbroken 
gradation into the other. But it has been said that 
the difference between the two periods is this : " The 
Vedic age was the one in which the main traditions 
of the Maha-Bharata and Ramayana seem to have 
taken place ; whilst the Brahmanic age, which suc- 
ceeded to the Vedic period, was the one in which 
the two poems were composed." ^ The Maha-Bharata, 
or " Great War of the Bharata," has for its founda- 
tion the struggle of the two rival branches of the 
great Bharata family, — a sort of Indian " War of 
the Roses," which took place in that part of India 
lying north of AUahabad and east of the Punjab. 
This was probably about a thousand years before 
our era, — some would place it as early as fifteen 
hundred years before. 

The traditions of this struggle were to the de- 
scendants of the mighty Bharata what the siege of 
Troy was to the Greeks : and having been sung by 
^ History of Indiay by J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i. 



28 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the minstrels and recounted by the story-tellers, they 
took permanent form in the great Indian Epic, tinder 
the hands of the Brahmans, who made it the vehicle 
of theological instruction.^ Of its theological bias 
we shall have occasion to speak later ; now we have 
need only to note what it has to teach us of the 
habits of the people of whom it speaks. 

But of course the great storehouse from which we 
must draw our materials is the Eig-Veda. The 
Vedas or "knowledge," the sacred writings of the 
Vedic-Aryans, are probably the oldest of all the ef- 
forts made by man to record the influence of God's 
spirit upon his soul. The Hindus believe that the 
original Veda was written by Brahma, and that 
having been preserved by tradition, it was finally 
arranged in its present form by the sage Dwaipay- 
ana, or Yyasa, — the " collector," as he is commonly 
called. These Vedas are divided into four parts, of 
which the first, called the Rich or Veda in metre^ has 
given the name Rig- Veda to the whole collection.^ 
But the Rig- Veda proper is the only one which is un- 
doubtedly " Vedic," the other three are Brahmanic. 

The whole chronology of India is too uncertain, 
too much like objects seen in a dream, to enable us 
to determine with any certainty the date of the Rig- 
Veda, but it is probable that the last of the hymns 
had been written before the great war, for the sail- 
ors of Solomon who brought back the treasures of 
the Indies to Jerusalem used the names which were 
given in India, but which were no longer the pure 

^ Colebrooke's Misc. Essays, vol. i. 

2 History of India, J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i. 



VEDAISM. 29 

forms of the Rig- Veda ; ^ so that if its language was 
archaic in the time of Solomon, it is allowing none 
too much time, in that age of slow change, if we say- 
that the last of the hymns had been sung before 
Moses led the people out of Egypt. 

Out of the mystery which shrouds the table-land 
of Central Asia, into the land of the Five Rivers, 
came the fathers of the Indo- Aryan race. They 
were a company of herdsmen, and the prayer which 
was ever on their lips was that the heavens would 
give them rain; for unless the clouds, the ''heavenly 
kine," let down their udders, the earthly cattle must 
die. That is the way their religious sense first ex- 
pressed itself ; rising from the immediate human 
want, in prayer to the infinitely human power which 
could sympathize with man, and be touched with the 
feeling of his infirmities. To the God, then, who had 
power over sun and rain, to the God of the firma- 
ment, the most frequent prayer was addressed. 

The chanters extol Indra with songs. 

Indra, the blender of all things, comes verily with his 
steeds that are harnessed at his word ; Indra, the richly 
decorated, the wielder of the thunderbolt. 

Indra, to render all things visible, elevated the sun in 
the sky, and charged the cloud with abundant waters. 

Shedder of rain, granter of aU desires, set open this 
cloud. Thou art never uncompliant with our requests. 

The shedder of rain, the mighty lord, the always com- 
pliant, invests men with his strength, as a bull defends a 
herd of kine.^ 

^ Stanley's Jewish History^ second series. 
2 Big-Veda Sankita^ Wilson, vol. i. p. 18. 



30 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

But still Indra was far away, and it might be that 
prayer, though it were chanted with frequent cry, 
would not pierce the vaulted sky. What had man 
that could pass from himself to Indra ? The only 
thing was fire. But that too must be divine. How 
else could it enter the heavenly tents ? And it was 
divine, for it came out of mystery to the dwellings 
of men. Agni, then, would be the mediator between 
man and God. And so they sang : — 

We select Agni, the messenger of the gods, their in- 
voker, the possessor of riches, the perf ecter of this rite. 

Agni, generated by attrition, bring hither the gods to 
the dipt grass ; thou art their invoker for us, and art to be 
adored. 

As thou dischargest the duty of messenger, arouse 
them desirous of the oblation ; sit down with them on the 
sacred grass. 

Agni, the bright, the purifier ! bring hither the gods to 
our sacrifice, to our oblations. 

Agni, shining with pure radiance, and charged with all 
the invocations of the gods, be pleased with this our praise.^ 

When the gods should come they would give them 
the best they had ; that which was most likely to 
please them, as it pleased men, the inspiring Soma 
juice. 

Indra, let thy coursers hither bring thee, bestower of 
desires, to drink the Soma juice ; may the priests, radiant 
as the sun, make thee manifest. 

We invoke Indra at the morning rite, we invoke him at 
the succeeding sacrifice, we invoke Indra to drink the 
Soma juice. 

1 Big-Veda Sanhitay vol. i. p. 29. 



VEDAISM. 31 

These dripping Soma juices are effused upon the sacred 
grass ; drink them, Indra, to recruit thy vigor. 

May this our excellent hymn, touching thy heart, be 
grateful to thee, and thence drink the effused libation.^ 

By the same process of thought which we have 
noted in the case of Agni, Soma, first thought of as 
a gift acceptable to the gods, became later a god 
himself. 

Thou, Soma, art thoroughly apprehended by our under- 
standing ; thou leadest us along a straight path ; by thy 
guidance, our righteous fathers obtained wealth among the 
gods. 

Thou, Soma, art the protector, the sovereign of the pious, 
. . . thou art holy sacrifice. Thou, Soma, hast generated all 
these herbs, the water, the kine ; thou hast spread out the 
spacious firmament ; thou hast scattered darkness with light. 

Divine and potent Soma, bestow upon us with thy 
brilliant mind, a portion of wealth.^ 

Thus the relirion be^an. There was no ritual 
but the family meal, in which the gods were asked 
to share. The newly cut grass was arranged in a 
ring for the gods to sit on. There was no priest 
save the father of the household ; his sons were the 
assistants, and the family was the congregation. 

A favorable spot having been chosen, the fire was 
lighted at sunrise, and a hymn, sometimes homely 
in its simple expression of trust, sometimes sublime 
in the effort of the human spirit to speak with the 
inspirer and hearer of prayer, and always pathetic 
in its yearning, was chanted by the father and his 
sons. Add to this ceremony of the chanted hymn 

^ Rig-Veda, vol. i. p. 39. 
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 232. 



32 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

and the lighted fire, the pouring out of the clarified 
butter of the humble household and the sprinkling of 
the Soma juice, and we have a picture of the Vedic 
ritual before it had been elaborated by Brahmanic 
hands. Though, as we have seen, Indra, Agni, and 
Soma were the earliest gods of the Vedic pantheon, 
yet the hymns, as we find them now, were addressed 
impartially to all the great phenomena of nature. 

Indra, the ruler of the sky, he who in his power 
held back the chariot of the sun as it descended the 
western slope, he who refreshed the thirsty earth, he 
at first was God of gods. When the storm gathered 
on the mountain tops and came hurtling into the 
valley below, bending the pines, scattering the cat- 
tle, blasting the mighty tree that dared to lift up its 
head, they said that Rudra, the great storm king, 
shot forth his thunderbolts. 

But it was not only in the active forces of nature 
that men found the witnesses to the divine presence. 

There are long days in India when the stillness of 
life under the burning sun is indescribable. Above, 
below, and on every side the great tide of sunlight 
fills all space. Such was not a day of Indra, for 
Indra was the personification of the active forces of 
the atmosphere, and now all things hang in heaven 
still. Not a day of Rudra, for no thunderbolt could 
pierce that vault of blue. Not a day of Agni, either, 
for the fire on the hearth is not needed when all is 
fire. On such a day the Vedas praised Varuna, the 
Greek Ovpavos ; the still, serene, and glorious heaven. 
In the cloudless sky, full of unseen power, the Aryan 
found the fittest symbol of the peaceful goodness 



VEDAISM. 33 

of the gods ; and so we find the noblest hymns 
addressed to Varuna, and to hhn ascended, too, the 
most frequent cry for pardon. 

However we break from thy laws from day to day, men 
as we are, O god Varuna, 

Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the 
furious, nor to the wrath of the spiteful ! 

To propitiate thee, Varuna, we unbend thy mind with 
songs, as the charioteer a weary steed. 

He who knows the place of the birds that fly through 
the sky, who on the waters knows the ships ; — 

He, the upholder of order, he who knows the twelve 
months with the offspring of each, and knows the month 
that is engendered afterwards ; — 

He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the 
bright, the mighty ; and knows those who reside on high ; — 

He the upholder of order, Varuna, sits down among 
his people ; he the wise sits there to govern. 

May he, the wise Aditya, make our paths straight all 
our days ; may he prolong our lives I 

Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move 
onward, as kine move to their pastures. 

O hear this, my calling, Varuna, be gracious now ; long- 
ing for help, I have called upon thee. 

Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth : 
listen on thy way.-^ 

The god whose light filled every crevice, whose 
presence quickened the limbs of the old, and whose 
warm breath drew forth the reptile and beast to bask 
in his glory, who lifted the humble fern on high and 
changed it to a tree of the forest, — surely he was 

^ Max Miiller's Lectures on the Vedas, Chips from a German 
Workshop^ vol. i. 



34 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the god who could not be deceived ; be must mean 
well to all life ; he had power to lift up the troubled 
soul. 

But there was a unity which underlay this seem- 
ing diversity. The earliest of the hymns indicate 
that this mysterious unity was concealed in the joint 
action of the two deities Agni and Soma. For while 
Agni was fire and Soma was the juice of the plant, 
yet they were at the same time the source of life 
and activity. We have seen how Agni manifested 
itself in many ways, but there were manifestations 
back of those, so to speak. Agni, before it appeared 
on the hearth as fire, had lain hid in the "' womb of 
the wood," which by friction had brought forth.^ 
So that Agni was without beginning and also with- 
out end. For when he issued forth into the flashing 
thunderbolt or reigned supreme in the cloudless 
sky, he had passed beyond the ken of mortals. 

There is something at once sublime and pathetic 
in this belief in the eternity of the original element, 
together with the clinging to the hope of its manifes- 
tation in the common life of man. It is the first 
intimation, as far as I know, of that irrepressible 
yearning of the human soul for an incarnation of 
the divine. 

The other indestructible element was Soma. That 
also had a material side which was never lost sight 
of ; but it too went forth into the immensity of life 
where the eye of man could no longer follow it. As 
it quickened the pulses of men, it came to be thought 

^ '* Agni, generated by attrition." — Big-Veda, vol. i. p. 29. 



VEDAISM. 35 

of as the originator of life. It gave the power to 
the plant to grow, to women to conceive, to the cow 
to secrete milk ; in fine, it was the origin of all the 
forces of secret growth, as Agni was of the active, 
manifesting powers of life. 

Thus was begun that system of the transmigration 
of an eternal principle which is the key to all the 
theology of India. Whatever we may call the special 
modifying philosophical beliefs w^hich came in later, 
they all centre in this faith. There is an eternal 
principle which folds and unfolds itself ceaselessly 
in the manifold appearances of life. It took tre- 
mendous proportions in later ages, but at the time 
we are now considering it was as simple as possible. 

This lurking duality of Agni and Soma, which 
seems to have been the first effort toward unity, soon 
issued into a sort of monotheism, which found ex- 
pression in the name Brahmanaspati, the Father 
of the Gods. And in order to approach this divine 
life there was need of more than ritual, there was 
need of faith. Thus we read, " He who with a he- 
lieving mind worships Brahmanaspati, the father 
of the gods, with oblations, he verily receives food, 
together with his sons, his kindred, his descendants, 
and obtains riches with all men." ^ 

This necessity for faith is indicated again : '' Ex- 
cite in us, Indra, veneration for the sun, for the 
waters, and for those who are worthy of the praise 
of living beings, as exempt from sin ; injure not our 
offspring while yet in the womb, ybr our trust is in 
thy mighty power." ^ 

^ Big-Veda Sanhita, trans, by Wilson, vol. ii. p. 273. 
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 269. 



36 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

It was formerly supposed that sacrifices formed 
no part of tlie Vedic ritual ; that they were the result 
of the later philosophy, which we call Brahmanic, 
but this is now known to be a mistake. That sacri- 
fices did not take the proportions at first which they 
afterwards assumed is true ; but the necessity for 
sacrifices is indicated in the earliest of the hymns, 
not as a means of expiating sin, but as a means 
of sustaining the gods. This conception of sacrifice, 
so different from the common '' heathen " view, and 
so entirely opposed to the later Hebrew belief, was 
the natural outcome of that fundamental conception 
of the Hindu mind already mentioned. So firmly 
were the authors of the Vedic hymns convinced that 
all things issued from the source to which they must 
return, that they believed that the gods were de- 
pendent upon men as truly as men were dependent 
upon the gods ! ^ 

Undoubtedly that idea of sacrifice sunk later to 
the common heathen notion of propitiation, but orig- 
inally it was the result of the belief in the mutual 
dependence of each life upon all other life. And 
therefore they said, with a divine insight that has 
been too little noted, that creation was accompanied 
by sacrifice. Around the unbroken ring of existence 
all energy must return upon itself. The fire on the 
hearth, the heavenly fires in their courses, the flash- 
ing thunderbolt, — they were all different, and yet 
they were one. 

What shall we say of these people ? Were they 
monotheistic, or polytheistic ? It seems difficult to 

^ The Religions of India, by A. Barth, traus. by Rev. J. Wood. 



VEDAISM. 37 

affirm either. They were not monotheistic, because 
under the manifold manifestations of the divine they 
did not grasp the idea of one personal character. 
Nor were they polytheistic, for they seemed in wor- 
shiping Indra to ignore Agni and to have forgotten 
Varuna, and so each in turn was made supreme, and 
the others did not appear abovQ the horizon of con- 
sciousness.^ 

We have mentioned the more prominent of the 
gods, or rather names of the divine essence, but there 
were many others, as again and again men tried to 
speak a name which would more perfectly express 
the divine character which was being made manifest 
to them through the experiences of life. Sometimes 
it was the activity of a man, sometimes it was the 
strength of a brute, again it was the unselfish forth- 
giving of the vegetable life, which seemed best to 
symbolize the power, or the goodness, or the wisdom 
of the divine. 

Little by little the old names of which we have 
spoken began to be felt by the subtler thinkers to 
be insuflficient as expressions of the divine life, and 
instead of the rising sun, and the flashing thunder- 
bolt, and the upleaping flame, the Rishis ^ began to 
speak of a neuter principle of life manifesting itself 
in a glorious body. Life, and birth, and death, and 
change, what are they ? The rushing wind causing 

1 ' ' This is not surely what we understand by polytheism. Yet 
it would be equally wrong" to call it monotheism. I should call it 
Kathenotheism. " — Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop^ 
vol. i. p. 28. 

2 The priests. 



38 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the great trees to moan and rock, the sudden calm, 
whence came they ? Some day the air is full of per- 
fume, the pines are sending out their incense as the 
warm sun kisses them. A fire is started in the 
forest, it sweeps for miles in its destructive course 
and then stops. How came these things to be so ? 
The Vedic- Aryans said it was Asura. The glorious 
body of the unseen god, changing at every instant, 
was what we call life and death ; the blowing of the 
wind was the breath of his nostrils ; the unseen 
perfume was the sign of his presence ; the raging of 
the fire was the fury of '' the glorious body of the 
principle of life, which is for itself and for others 
the origin of movement." ^ They had tried by the 
doctrine of Asura to bring the divine near to them, 
and behold they had placed it beneath them ! Yet 
their experience was not a unique one ; they were 
impressed with the phenomena of nature, they were 
sure that they witnessed to a higher life than their 
own, they could not tell which of these phenomena 
was supreme, so each became supreme in turn. It 
was not the rigid purity of the monotheist, but it was 
far from the licentious excess of the polytheist. It 
was the first attempt of the human mind to realize 
the universality of the divine ; wherever the child 
placed its hand it felt the thrill of divine life. 
Nothing loitJiout God^ that was the discovery — if 
one likes the word — of the early Aryan mind. That 
was the revelation, I should prefer to say, of the 
everlasting Father to his children, amidst the glori- 
ous scenery of India. Illustrations of this truth 

1 Essai sur le Veda, par E. Burnouf , pp. 320-340. 



VEDAISM. 89 

abound in the Rig- Veda. Thus, " Aditi, i. e., ' the 
Absolute,' is heaven. Aditi is the firmament. 
Aditi is father, mother, son. Aditi is all the gods." ^ 
Again : — 

Thou art the supreme God, the eternal, celestial spirit, 
that all the Rishis confess. That also thou dost announce 
thyself to me. I believe in the truth of thy word, but I 
know not how to render thee visible to me. Thou thy- 
self alone dost know thyself, Being of beings, God of gods, 
Lord of all creatures. ... It is in thee that we are ; I 
and all those beings which surround me. ... I see in 
thy unity all the universe, with all things visible and in- 
visible. Thou dost burn like the fire and like the sun in 
thy immensity, mountain of light, on all sides resplendent, 
without commencement, without middle, without end.^ 

This revelation the Vedic Aryans were led into 
much as the Hebrews were led. God's message 
to the Aryan was read in the blazing sunlight, was 
heard in the awful muttering of the storm, was felt 
when the gigantic pines bent and bowed themselves 
as He drew near. But the message to Israel came 
through the experiences of a nation. Not through 
nature, but through man. Yet see how long they 
were in learning it ! That which now seems to us so 
plain, that there is but one God, the Hebrews at the 
beginning would not have understood. At first they 
spoke of the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of 
Jacob, they did not doubt that there were other 
gods. They asked Pharaoh to let them go that they 

^ Big-Veda Sanhita, trans, by Wilson, vol. i. p. 230. 
2 Essai sur le Veda, par E. Burnouf , p. 307. 



40 HIS SFAR IN THE EAST. 

f 

might worship their God. Later they became 
bolder, and said there is no God like our God, " He 
shall be our guide unto death." While the '* God 
of Jacob " was with them they would not fear. Not 
till the time of Isaiah could they say, " There is no 
God but the Lord." What the Hebrew asserted of 
the spiritual forces of life, the Aryan had said of 
the phenomena of nature. The Hebrews were led 
to believe in the one God by seeing the superiority of 
the idea of the God of Israel, over those ideas which 
held sway among the heathen about them. The 
unity of the divine was the revelation to the He- 
brew, the universality of the divine was the revela- 
tion to the Aryan. 

But this is not the only way in which the Rig- 
Veda reminds us of the Bible. The most careless 
reader of these hymns cannot fail to be struck with 
the absence of anything like fear of the gods. It is 
a tone of childlike confidence that sounds through- 
out. Now when we remember that these are the 
oldest of all religious books, we shall be inclined to 
doubt the popular belief that all religion begins in 
fear. If fetichism be the earliest manifestation of 
human fear of something beyond the seen, still that 
can hardly be called religion, for religion means the 
conscious relation to the unseen. It is true that 
the fear of the gods seems to be the most power- 
ful element in the debased heathen worship with 
which the traveler comes in contact to-day, but it 
was not always so, as Aryan and Semitic history 
show. At the beginning of Hebrew history stands 
Abraham and he was called the friend of God ; in 



VEDAISM. 41 

the childhood of AryanisQi were chanted the Vedic 
hymns, and to these singers the gods seemed very 
friendly. Again and again they tell the flame to 
mount up quickly, and from the far-off sky call the 
gods to the sacrifice, that they with men may drink 
the inspiring Soma juice and rejoice. And yet this 
sense of friendliness was not the result of moral 
obtuseness, for there are frequent prayers for de- 
liverance from sin. 

I invoke the divine waters : waters, take away whatso- 
ever sin has been formed in me, whether I have know- 
ingly done wrong, or pronounced imprecations against holy 
men, or have spoken untruth.^ 

Varuna, loosen for me the upper, the middle, the lower 
band, so, son of Aditi, shall we through righteousness in 
thy worship become freed from sin. 

Preserve him who praises thee from sin with bands of 
iron. 

Dissolve not, Agni, our ancestral friendship, for thou art 
cognizant of the past as well as of the present : in like 
manner as light speeds over the sky, so decay impairs my 
body ; think of me before that scene of destruction pre- 
vails.^ 

The scope of this inquiry does not lead us to con- 
sider the morality of the Vedas except in as far as 
they give indications of a belief on the part of the 

1 Big-Veda Sanhita, Wilson, toI. i. pp. 57, 58, 64, 156, 158. 

2 The most beautiful hymn to Varuna, with the refrain ' * have 
mercy, Almig'hty, have mercy," is so well known that I do not quote 
it, fearing it may be supposed to be the only one of its kind. It 
will be found entire in Max Miiller's Chips from a German Work- 
shop, vol. i., and in Dr. James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Beligions. 



42 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Vedic- Aryans that the faith expressed in the hymns 
must be incorporated into life.^ 

When the Vedic-Aryans first appear in the Pun- 
jab they are seen to show evidence of a struggle else- 
where. What that was we shall see later, but for 
the present it is only necessary to bear in mind that 
there had been a great religious struggle, and that 
these herdsmen believed themselves to be in the 
right. So the first prayers which they uttered, 
prayers which at first sight might seem to show no 
feeling save that of selfishness, a desire to get as 
much as possible of this world's goods, are more than 
that. They pray indeed for rain and food, for pro- 
lific cattle, for health and safety from storms, but it 
is as men who feel that they have a claim on the 
gods, as those who have " kept the faith " in the 
midst of a perverse generation. 

So the prayer for temporal prosperity is really a 
plea for justice. " If I, O Indra," says one of the 
bards, " if I were master of such wealth as thou, I 
would be generous to him that praised me, but would 
bestow nothing upon the wicked : day by day would 
I give in abundance to him who paid me honor, be 
he who he miQ:ht. We have no dearer relative than 
thou, were it a father even." 

If it be answered, that this does nat show a high 
standard of morality, the answer is we have no right 
to demand a high standard at such a stage of experi- 
ence. It is not found among any people, not even 
among the most religious the world has ever seen — 
the Jews. ' 

1 See Roth's ''Morality of the Vedas," in Journal of American 
Oriental Society, vol. iii. 1853. 



I 



VEDAISM. 43 

But a better means of judging of their sense of 
right and wrong is found in noting what they con- 
demn in themselves. Like all nomadic people, the 
vice of gambling was widespread. Yet we find a 
hymn in the Eig-Veda in which the gambler bewails 
his fault, recognizes his sin, and confesses that he 
finds no means of escape. 

The absence of fear, already spoken of as a char- 
acteristic of the hymns, would lead us to suspect that 
there would be a contempt of the power of the gods. 
But this is far from being the case. The sense of 
the good-will of the gods to men saved them from 
thinking of them as powers which might turn on the 
dead, but this did not lead to licentiousness ; they 
prayed for forgiveness and believed that the wicked 
should be thrust down into the deep by Varuna, the 
supreme judge of the living and of the dead. But 
in the mystery of the darkness that was apart from 
the presence of the God of the cloudless sky, they 
left the wicked, and did not exercise their imagina- 
tions in an effort to depict the torture of the un- 
happy dead until all sense of the loving kindness of 
the celestials had given place to a fear which could 
only be allayed by bloody sacrifices. That was as far 
from the thought of the Vedic Aryans, as the wor- 
ship of Moloch was from the father of the faithful. 

But perhaps the belief which had the most healthy 
moral effect was that fundamental faith in the uni- 
versality of the divine which may be called the dis- 
tinguishing mark of the Vedic age. This belief, 
which on its intellectual side was so perilously near 
to polytheism, on its moral side was saved from 



44 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

degradation by being ascribed to Yaruna, the all- 
seeing God, as Omniscience. He counts the very 
" winks of the eyes of men." When two whisper 
together he hears them, and yet he knows the flight 
of the bird and the path of the wind. 

He whose light can strike into the shadows of the 
mountain cave, he too can shine into the darkened 
heart of man and reveal its secrets. That conscious- 
ness of the abiding presence of One " to whom all 
hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom 
no secrets are hid," ^ is still believed to be the best 
preventive of immorality, and so was it thought to 
be by the men who kept their herds on the plains of 
the Punjab, when Abraham still dwelt in Ur of the 
Chaldees. 

We have now reached a point where we may 
pause and ask ourselves what are the leading ideas 
of the Rig- Veda, and what has the religion of Jesus 
that can affiliate w^ith them. Of course one who 
does not believe that any common ground can, or 
ought to be found, will be able to point to much in 
these hymns which our taste must repudiate and 
our conscience condemn; but our object is very dif- 
ferent ; it is to find, if possible, not what is common 
and gross and immoral in this system, and compare 
it with the excellences of the religion of Jesus, but 
rather, believing that every good and perfect gift is 
from above, to find the good and then show that 
Christianity can fulfill it as truly as it does the law 
and the prophets of Israel. 

^ See the Prayer at the beginning of the Conmiunion Service, in 
the Book of Common Prayer. 



VEDAISM. 45 

There are, then, four points to which I would call 
attention in the Eig-Veda. They are, first, that ear- 
liest expression of the religious instinct, the prayer for 
bread and health and peace. Secondly, the prayer 
for the divine participation in sacrifice ; thirdly, faith 
in the divine good- will to good men ; and, lastly, the 
belief in the divine universality. 

The first is not peculiar to the Vedic-Aryans ; it 
is the prayer that the child -spirit of humanity 
frames when its eyes first open to the mystery of 
life. But when Christ came with his revelation of 
the spirituality of God He did not ignore this great 
human want. The first prayer that He bade his 
disciples put up for themselves was that they might 
receive their daily bread. No doubt the prayer 
for daily bread in the mouth of Him whose meat 
and drink it was to do the will of God was far 
more than any prayer for bodily sustenance, but it 
included it. The man who knows that man does 
not live by bread alone will mean something very 
different from the poor starving child of God, when 
he says, " Our Father, give me this day my daily 
bread ; " but the same thought underlies the two 
prayers, and that is faith in One who knows what 
we have need of before we ask, but to whom we can 
come in our ignorance, asking for that which it seems 
to us we need ; whether it be food for ourselves or 
for our children, or house or raiment. When Christ 
put a prayer in the mouth of his disciples, it was one 
which would express the deepest cravings of a soul 
athirst for God, and at the same time reach down and 
serve as a ladder, by means of which the hungry 



46 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

herdsman might mount to the knowledge of One 
in whom he lived and moved and had his being. 
In teaching a prayer which expressed not only the 
saints' hunger and thirst after Righteousness, but 
also the primary craving of the natural man, Christ 
has shown that no religion is outside the range of 
his sympathy ; no nation too far from the divine life 
to hear the good news that the faith of its fathers 
has been justified. 

Of the second point it is hardly necessary to 
speak ; it is so evident that the prayer for the divine 
presence is a Christian prayer. Not that I would 
have it supposed that I think the Rig- Veda is the 
gospel before Christ, — far from it ! I only believe 
that it was a prophecy of the gospel, and that when 
that which is perfect had come, that which was in 
part was to be done away. And this second prayer 
is an illustration of that. It is true that the Rishis 
prayed for the divine presence, and so does the 
Lord's Prayer. " Thy kingdom come " is common 
to both, but in the Rig- Veda the coming of the king- 
dom is made dependent upon the giving of bread, 
and in the Lord's Prayer the giving of bread is 
made dependent upon the coming of the kingdom ! 
The Vedic- Aryans prayed for bread, and then asked 
the gods to share it with them, because they be- 
lieved that the gods themselves were dependent upon 
the family meal for their own strength. But with 
Jesus the prayer was for bread, only if it would not 
prevent the nourishment of his soul with the bread 
of life. In other words, the Vedic-Aryan believed 
that the kingdom would come if he was cared for, 



VEDAISM. 47 

and tlie Christian believes that if the kingdom comes 
he will not be forgotten. 

I repeat, the man who does not believe that the 
Rig- Veda is any revelation of the divine character 
to men will turn over its pages and find nothing 
but the weary repetition of extravagant epithets ad- 
dressed to the Dawn or to the Maruts ; a confused 
mythology, and sometimes gross sensuality, yet the 
same man might read the revelation to Israel and 
fail to see the writing of the finger of God ! But 
the traces of it are to be found in both : in one so 
plain that he who runs may read ; and in the other 
not so obscure that he who would find should fail. 

We have spoken of the answer to the Aryan's 
prayer in the great Christian prayer, nor need we 
go beyond that to find the justification of their faith 
that if the divine life came among men it would 
be favorable to them, and rejoice in their simple joys 
and mourn with them in the old sorrrow that was 
no more absent from the valley of the Indus than 
from the shores of the lake of Galilee. The mes- 
sage of the first Christmas carol was forever per- 
petuated in the prayer of Jesus. When the divine 
life came, the tradition embodied in the gospel is 
that the angels sang " Peace on earth, good- will to 
men." "When ye pray," said Jesus, "say Our 
Father. Pray to Him who maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good. Pray to Him who so loved 
the world that he sent his son, not to condemn the 
world, but that the world by Him might be saved." 

And the whole life of Jesus was in harmony with 
this Aryan faith that when the divine life came to 



48 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

join in the sacrifice it would have good-will to men. 
He went about doing good, and preaching the good 
news of the kingdom of God — of God whom He 
always called the Father. And that word, Father, 
means the everlasting friend of the human soul, 
whom neither the darkness of ignorance, nor the 
cloud of sin, nor the mountain barrier of prejudice 
can hold back from that communion, which, as the 
Aryan dimly saw, is the joy of God and the life of 
man. 

It remains now for us to inquire if Christianity 
has any answer to the yearning of the Aryan soul 
for the universality of God which expressed itself 
so insufficiently in the doctrine of Asura. 

If we consider Christianity as represented in the 
life of Jesus, we cannot fail to be struck with the fre- 
quency and apparent naturalness of what we call the 
miraculous. Whatever explanation men may think 
best to give of it, even should they be led to deny the 
accuracy of the description of certain evenfcs in the 
life of Jesus, it will still remain in the last analysis 
a miraculous life ; and those special manifestations 
which we call " miracles " were spoken of, by those 
who it is asserted witnessed them, as " signs " ; were 
declared by Him who is reported to have worked them 
to be signs, or manifestations, not of a power within 
himself, but the manifestations of the power of Him 
who created all things. Whether these be matters 
of fact, or stories, or legends of that Life, it is not 
my purpose to discuss ; the point to which I wish to 
call attention is this : that these stories give the best 
representation of the way in which Jesus regarded 



VEDAISM. 49 

nature ; which is the question that concerns us now. 
The gospel presents us the picture of one full of 
divine energy going throughout the land and heal- 
ing those who were diseased ; in many cases these 
diseases were asserted to be the effect of the pres- 
ence of an evil spirit ; in every case they were 
treated as the effect of some interruption of the 
divine purpose. Jesus seems to have looked into 
the life of the man whom he undertook to heal, and 
to have seen there the contradiction of the power 
of God. His miracle consisted in the removing 
of this hostile power, this foreign substance, as the 
physicians would say to-day. So considered, every 
miracle was as truly a witness to the presence of 
the divine life in the diseased body as the physi- 
cian's administration of medicine is a witness to his 
belief in the presence and power of the vital force. 
And just as a physician only pretends to " assist 
nature," so the miracle of Jesus was the setting 
free of the current of the divine life which had 
been checked. The miracles of Jesus are not rep- 
resented as the result of the exercise of external 
power so much as the cooperation with the power 
within nature itself, which was possible only to him 
who had entered into the secret councils of God. 
This picture, then, is of one who knew no man in 
whom there was not a spark of the divine life which 
might not be blown upon by the gentle breath of 
sympathy until the flame of love to the father re- 
vived ; and also of one who knew nothing of a 
kosmos divorced from God ; who saw the divine will 
and love and wisdom working amid the groaning 

4 



50 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

and travailing of the creation, and cooperating with 
that divine life immanent in nature, wrought the 
wonders which have been related of Him, and which 
seem so incredible to the men who have never found 
trace of God in the work of his hands. Every mir- 
acle of Jesus was bearing witness to the faith of the 
Aryan, that there is no mountain, no river, no tree, 
no man, no object, animate or inanimate, in which 
there is not the presence of God. 

But they were doing more than that. Those mira- 
cles which are reported of the birth of Jesus, and of 
his resurrection ; those stories of the wonders wrought 
by Him, not alone upon the bodies of men, but also 
upon what we call inanimate nature, were bearing wit- 
ness to the divine presence in all the kosmos, and at 
the same time to the truth that there is a difference 
in the manifestation of power ; that though it be true 
to speak of God as immanent in nature, it is fatal to 
belief in the Fatherhood of God to think of Him as 
contained in nature ; for while it be true that mani- 
festations of divine wisdom and love and power may 
be found in nature, it is only by those who have 
first found them within man.^ Jesus gave to man- 
kind the highest manifestation of the divine when he 
let it shine through his own personality, and in the 
light of that personality we can see that which He 
saw, that nature is instinct with the divine presence. 
So considered, the miracles of Jesus become some- 
thing more than the justification of the faith of the 
Aryan in the immanence of the divine life, they be- 

^ See ''Nature and God," in Essays, Philosophical and Theolog- 
icaL By James Martineau, vol. i. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 



VEDAISM. 51 

come a revelation of that which the Aryan failed to 
grasp, which is the superiority of the human mani- 
festation of the divine life: and just because of 
that lack the Vedic- Aryan was always confused in 
regard to the relation of man to nature. He could 
not tell whether the spiritual life of man has its 
origin in matter or whether matter is an expression 
of mind. And that confusion became fatal to prog- 
ress. The history of Hindu thought is a weary 
round of questioning : Brahmanism pushed idealism 
to the extreme until matter became the one unreal- 
ity ; and modern Hinduism, rushing to the other 
pole, reached in its gross idolatry the lowest point 
of degradation when it ascribed the origin of life to 
sexual intercourse and worshiped the genital organs, 
as is done in India to-day. This inability to recog- 
nize character as the highest manifestation of divine 
life lies back of the modern as of the ancient per- 
plexity concerning the origin of matter. When 
character is recognized as the highest manifestation 
of life possible, then it becomes a matter of indiffer- 
ence whether or not the material from which the 
kosmos has been evolved, be thought of as coexist- 
ent with God or not. I think it is only in this day 
that we are entering into that higher conception of 
God as a creator which the Aryan was feeling after 
but failed to grasp, but which the miracles of Jesus 
were revealing. A well - known French writer has 
declared that the idea of creation is not to be found 
in the Vedas, but " the universal agent is the pro- 
ductor, the generator of beings, and the father of the 
living. The supreme and universal Being is not 



52 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

a person separated from the world." ^ But surely 
he has in mind a notion of creation which we our- 
selves have found to be inadequate to that larger 
knowledge of the kosmos into which we have been 
led. There is no inconsistency in thinking of the Su- 
preme Being as existing apart from nature and yet 
immanent in nature. If we turn back in thought to 
that word which Jesus always used of the Supreme 
— Father, — we shall gain, I believe, a conception 
of nature truer and far nobler than that which has 
been contemptuously called the " Carpenter theory." 
The creation of a father is the forthgiving of a fa- 
ther's life. It has been well said that " the self im- 
parting energy of love is the first cause of creation." 
The miracles of Jesus showed that this self -imparting 
energy of love was omnipresent in his day : in other 
words, that creation was not an accomplished fact, 
the result of a divine fiat in a moment of time, long 
ages ago ; but rather that it is the constant uphold- 
ing of nature by God's presence, which makes crea- 
tion a perpetual act. The fatherhood of God in its 
relation to nature means the immanence of creative 
power. Without the knowledge of the correlation 
of physical forces, St. Paul yet entered into the true 
spiritual science of nature when he wrote, '' In Him 
we live and move and have our being." 

That is the answer of Christianity to the Arj^an, 
who says, '' To our fathers was revealed the truth of 
the Universality, the Omnipresence of the Divine. 
We can recognize no religion as true which has no 
place for this fundamental belief of the Vedic-Aryan ; 

^ E. Burnoiif , Essai sur le Veda^ p. 453. 



VEDAISM. 63 

for our religious consciousness will bear no clearer 
witness to any new truth of religion than it does to 
that old one." We do not need to make little of 
such a sublime faith ; we believe that the gospel of 
Jesus comprehended it in the larger revelation to 
mankind. We have only to look back to the life 
of Jesus, in the new sense of the nearness of God 
which has come through the study of nature in this 
day, to see that by Jesus nature was always treated 
as man was treated, as that which had within itself 
the divine life. 

When He drew near to man. He drew near to the 
divinity which was in him ; and when He drew near 
to nature. He did so as one who felt that man and 
nature form one great whole. 

The disorders in nature are from a lack of har- 
mony between human reason, which is the mani- 
festation of the divine in man, and force and law, 
which are the divine manifestation in nature. Jesus 
never lost sight of and never confused the triple 
manifestation of the Divine Life. God in Himself ; 
that which no man hath seen nor can see. God in 
man; God in nature. But just as God in man, 
the Christ, is subject to God the Father, so God 
in nature. Force, is to be subject to God in man, 
Reason. And yet nature is an entity distinct from 
man, and man is an entity distinct from God. The 
perfect harmony of thought and life will be possible 
only when all nature having been subjected unto the 
Son of man, He himself becomes subjected unto the 
Father, that God may be all in all.^ 

1 1 Cor. XV. 28, R. V. 



54 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Now with all this good, with all the noble truths 
which were incorporated in it, it still ought not be 
difficult for us to say why Vedaism failed. For it 
did fail ; Brahmanism, which grew from its roots, 
lived by the power of a new truth which it intro- 
duced into the system. Vedaism failed because it 
was nature worship. Not that the material universe 
was worshiped, but the Divine Essence was con- 
ceived of as dwelling in nature exclusively. The 
illustrations of divine power were found in the 
storm ; of divine goodness in the refreshing rain ; of 
divine care in the unerring sunrise. Such very likely 
has been the beginning of every religion, and its in- 
fluence will be felt just so long as the people con- 
tinue in intimate contact with nature. So at least it 
was with the Vedic- Aryan. When the nomadic herds- 
man life had passed away, and men began to feel in 
a higher civilization that their welfare depended not 
so much upon nature as upon man, the old nature 
worship no longer satisfied and comforted them. 
The beautiful goodness of nature had given place to 
the cunning of man, and the gods of the mountains 
seemed powerless in the village and in the town. 

If now it be asked why, in the progress of civiliza- 
tion, the Aryans did not bring their gods down with 
them from the mountains and enthrone them as vil- 
lage divinities, even as Abraham came into Canaan 
with the God he had known in Ur of the Chaldees, 
the answer is that the fundamental error of the 
Hindu religion lay at the root of Yedaism. That 
error was Pantheism. God was not a person. In 
other words there was no God. There was a divine 



VEDAISM. 65 

unknown, unseen mystery back of life, which took 
personal and impersonal forms, but it was not essen- 
tially personal ; there was no will, nor affection, nor 
self-consciousness. As therefore there was no divine 
person, there could be no personal identity between 
Brahmanism and Vedaism. When the herdsmen of 
Afghanistan built cities in the valley of the Indus, 
they left the gods of their fathers behind them and 
gave to the Divine Essence new names. That Pan- 
theism was the necessary form for the transmission 
of the truth of the immanence of God, we may be- 
lieve as firmly as that Anthropomorphism was the 
necessary illusion for the perpetuation of the belief 
in the personality of God. In which case the election 
of the Hebrew, for transmitting the one will be no 
more apparent than the mission of the Aryan in the 
preservation of the other. I have tried to show how 
the gospel of Jesus is full of the idea of the imma- 
nence of God. Every reader of the Bible knows how 
in the teaching of the Master the old anthropomor- 
phic symbol of the Jewish dispensation fell away, 
and the God in " whom we live and move and have 
our being," " who is about our path and about our 
bed," stood revealed as the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, loving every human soul, governing 
every wayward child, healing our sicknesses, cleans- 
ing our sins, lifting us from the death of sin to the 
life of righteousness. So, then, if I were asked for 
an illustration of Christianity as being the revela- 
tion in which all the nations of the world are to be 
blest, I would answer : in the life of Jesus is gathered 
the Aryan revelation of the Immanence of God, and 



56 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the Semitic revelation of the Personality of God ; 
and more, in that commingling both are transfig- 
ured ; the Immanence of God means power and law 
and wisdom manifesting themselves as making for 
righteousness ; and the Personality of God means 
love and forgiveness and grace gathering together 
the children of God that are scattered abroad. 



CHAPTER III. 

BRAHMANISM. 

The second phase of the religion of India is 
called Brahmanism. It is not easy to draw a line 
which shall divide Brahmanism from Vedaism ; the 
former is an outgrowth of the latter. The simple 
ritual of the Vedas expanded by slow degrees into 
the elaborate ceremonial of the Brahmanic sacri- 
fices, which were so expensive that only the rich 
could afford them. A ritual so elaborate that only 
the initiated could follow it caused a division among 
the worshipers which gradually hardened into the 
caste system of modern India. A philosophy was 
developed which swept through the four stages of 
Materialism, Skepticism, Idealism, and Mysticism ; ^ 
and ^ theology arose by the banks of the Ganges so 
profound in its speculations, so lofty in its aspira- 
tion, and widespread in its search for truth, that the 
logical mind of the West, used to the definitions 
which have their basis in historical facts and expe- 
riences, loses itself in the effort to thread the dimly 
lighted labyrinth of Oriental speculation. Un- 
checked by contact with other nations, and sepa- 
rated from the active life of the West, Brahmanism 
shows, in philosophy, in ritual, and in theology, 
^ Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy, vol. ii. Lecture V. 



68 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

crudities and absurdities innumerable; so that it 
would be equally true to speak of Brahmanism as 
a splendid effort of the human mind to solve the 
problems of life, or to declare that it is a mass of 
ridiculous nonsense unworthy of the consideration 
of thoughtful men. And it would be quite possible, 
moreover, to draw from the recognized authorities of 
the Brahmanic religion passages which would bear 
out either assertion ; but those who believe that God 
has not left himself without witness, in any nation, 
will seek for the good while not ignoring the evil ; and 
will value the good all the more, knowing how easy 
it is for the human mind, even in its search after 
the highest truth, to be drawn aside by that which 
is unworthy of it. They will never cease to wonder 
that out of the corruptions of Hindu society there 
should have come thoughts which we may reverently 
compare with the words of our own Bible, and be- 
lieve that they had the same source. The search for 
such traces of the influence of the Divine Spirit 
upon the lives of men will never lose its interest 
for the student of religion, — unless, indeed, he has 
somehow come to believe that the Revelation to 
Israel exhausted the divine reason, and that the 
Word did not lighten every man that has come into 
the world. 

But before doing that, it may be well to try and 
fix in our minds certain landmarks by which our 
course may be guided ; for Indian history is like the 
course of the river Ganges, which, continually over- 
flowing its banks, leaves that which was the bed of 
last year miles away from the course which it follows 



BRAHMANISM. 59 

now, so that it becomes more or less necessary to 
use the terms Vedic and Brahmanic in an arbitrary- 
sense ; for, while the historian may speak of the 
Vedic period as that time in which the events of the 
Maha-Bharata were being enacted, the student of 
the religious thought of India must confine it within 
stricter limits, and speak of the Vedic period as that 
age in which the hymns of the Rig- Veda were sung ; 
which was an indefinite time before the year 1000 
B. c. The next two hundred years lie on the bor- 
der of both periods, and may be claimed by either. 

It was during this time that the first code of laws 
was compiled, and ascribed to Manu, — that myste- 
rious person whose name, like the Semitic Adam, is 
the generic name of the race, the ancestor of all 
living. The next great literary work of this period 
was the collection, and, to use a modern term, the 
editing, of the Rig- Veda. All this was done in the 
land pf the five rivers before the people had taken 
those momentous steps which they could never re- 
trace. Attention has already been called to the 
fact that in the Vedic period the father of the house- 
hold was at once priest and king, but, when the age 
of conquest began, it was inevitable that there should 
come a differentiation of society, and that the work 
which originally had been done by one should become 
so difficult that it would require special training and 
a life devoted to its accomplishment. 

The first work which presented itself to a people 
passing from the nomadic to the settled life was 
war. The warrior now lifts his head as a man dis- 



60 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

tinct from the rest o£ the community. Of course 
the claims which would be put forth by such a class 
would not go unchallenged, and naturally also the 
challenge would be made in the name of what here- 
tofore had been deemed supreme — religion. The 
conflict which now arose between the warrior and 
the priest is the same as meets us on every page of 
the history of mediaeval Europe, and it ended in In- 
dia, as in Europe, in a sort of compromise. That is 
to say, the priest, as the representative of religion, 
was theoretically admitted to be the superior of the 
warrior, but it was also insisted upon that the war- 
rior should have the help of the supernatural power, 
at the disposal of the priest, in return for the protec- 
tion of the secular arm. It was thus the caste sys- 
tem of India began. The priestly caste was called 
the Brahmin, and the warrior was called the Ksha- 
triyas ; and the laws of Manu declare the '' sacerdotal 
order cannot prosper without the military, nor the 
military without the sacerdotal ; and the prosperity 
of both, in this world and in the next, "depends 
on their cordial union." ^ Two classes having been 
evolved by the necessities of life, the rest of man- 
kind naturally remained to form the other. 

The Veisyas were the traders or the husbandmen, 
in a word, all who were neither priests nor soldiers. 
To this class there was added later a fourth, who were 
the aborigines of the conquered territory on which 
the great host was at this time moving. The Sudras, 
not belonging to the Aryan family, were counted 
beneath the consideration of the lowest of the con- 
quering race. 

^ Elphinstone's History of India, vol. i. 



BRAHMANISM. 61 

So far there is nothing but what we would expect, 
indeed, nothing that we are not familiar with in the 
history of western Europe. It seems to be but one 
more illustration of the change of a community from 
" an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogene- 
ity by the increase of the heterogeneity in the en- 
vironment," and yet the term " Indian caste " has 
come to be the synonym of all that is hateful in the 
organization of society. 

The answer that is sometimes given, that the evil 
in India was due to the impossibility of breaking 
the " cake of custom " has been shown to be un- 
satisfactory, but Mr. Fiske's attempt to account for 
that inability seems to be equally so. It will not 
do to say '' the Oriental stage ... is not a stage 
through which progressive nations pass, but it is a 
stage in which further progress is impossible, save 
through the occurrence of some deep-reaching social 
revolution."^ India saw a social revolution which 
one would have supposed would have broken the 
" cake of custom," when Gautama began his work ; 
and, indeed, it was broken, but there was no power 
in the revolution of Buddha to prevent its recement- 
ing. I believe the misery of caste has its origin in 
that thought of mankind which underlies the word 
itself. The Spanish word casta^ from which caste 
is derived, meaus ''a breed." The reason that it 
was so hard to break up this custom was, that it was 
associated with the deepest religious convictions of 
the Aryan people. 

We have already seen that the fundamental belief 
^ Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy , vol. ii. By John Fiske. 



62 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

in the universality of the divine, unenlightened by 
the revelation of the character of the divine, led to 
the association of the divine with that which some- 
how the human mind felt was unworthy of it ; the 
consequence was that it became necessary to make 
formal distinctions, not only between things, but also 
between occupations, and then between men ; until 
a belief arose in different '' breeds " of men. Eome 
was saved from the caste system by belief in force, 
which was common to all men, but India could not 
accept such materialism as that. Greece was saved 
from it by faith in intelligence, but India could find 
no rest in rationalism. Judsea came very near to 
caste in Phariseeism, but there were other elements 
which counteracted that. Christianity brought into 
the world the belief in character, and faith in char- 
acter is what lies back of democracy ; the very anti- 
pode of caste. It was this failure to recognize char- 
acter as the highest manifestation of the Divine life 
which first created caste, and afterwards made it 
well-nigh impossible to overcome the belief. It will 
never be overcome, save by the preaching of a gospel 
that " God has made of one all the children of men," 
and that to the highest possibility of humanity each 
man is called. 

This belief in the necessity of arbitrary distinc- 
tions between things holy and unholy, having once 
taken possession of men's minds, was not likely to 
cease with the division of men into castes ; it would 
permeate all society. The consequence was that it 
soon became impossible for any save those specially 
instructed in the mysteries, to perform them, and 



BRAHMANISM. 63 

thus the priests became a necessity to all classes of 
men. That this followed as a natural consequence 
of the theories of life, of which we have already- 
spoken, seems so plain that the popular explanation 
that the elaborate ritual was an invention of the 
priests, in order that they might fasten their hold 
upon the people, is no longer necessary. An artifi- 
cial ritual was sure to follow the artificial distinc- 
tions among men and things, and then the necessity 
of a hierarchy would be apparent to all. 

It was about this time that the Purohita (literally 
prcepositus) or family chaplain to the great chiefs 
and nobles arose.^ The next step was the division of 
the Brahmans themselves into different orders and 
the continuation of the Veda. The highest order of 
Brahmans was called " Hotri," and they alone were 
allowed to preside at the sacrifices, which had once 
been the privilege of every father of a family. But 
to the Eig - Veda was now added the Yagur - Veda, 
which consisted of a rich or hymn, and a dogmatic 
commentary on the same. Yagur - Veda, in which 
were embodied all the formulas for the sacrifices, 
was the special study of the second order or Adh- 
varyus. Last in order was the Sama-Veda the ser- 
vice book of the Udgatri or lowest order, whose busi- 
ness it was to chant the hymns at the sacrifice, which 
was actually performed by the Adhvaryus and pre- 
sided over by the Plotri. 

This process of adding to the sacred Canon, hav- 
ing begun, was continued later by the addition to 
^ Satapatha Brdhmana. Part I. , by Julius Eggeling. 



64 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the Vedas of the Brahmanas, or authoritative com- 
mentaries of the Brahmans on the order of sacrifice. 
By this time the religion had traveled far from the 
life of the common people, and had become the very- 
opposite of all that was worthy in the worship of 
the early Aryan herdsmen in the Punjab. The 
human conscience, which cannot ignore the existence 
of sin, which does not dare to ascribe sin to the 
Divine,^ made the early Pantheism of their fathers 
impossible for men who had begun to recognize that 
there was such a thing as evil in the world. Faith 
in a divine person would have led to the revelation 
of righteousness, and in the absence of that faith it 
was inevitable that Brahmanism should sink to the 
degradation which it reached in the Athavangiras, 
or incantations, without which the sacrifice could 
not be propitious. Even should there be one failure 
at the end of a two days' ceremony the work must 
begin again. 

While it is not necessary to account for the rise 
of the ceremonial by the supposition of the craft of 
the priests, no one can doubt what would follow on 
the belief that the formula of sacrifice was known 
to the priest alone, and that even for them, it was 
no easy matter to follow the intricacies of the cere- 
monial. The dignity of the priest was enhanced 
without an effort on his part, and the people became 
the prey of every evil-minded man who had been 
born a Brahman. 

^ Later the fatalism of India did lead, in the philosophy which 
preceded Buddhism, to this blasphemy, and that having- been ut- 
tered, the caste system disappeared, until its revival in Hinduism. 
I believe that the assertion of caste was an attempt to escape the 
inevitable immorality of Pantheism. 



BRAHMANISM. 65 

And yet the Bralimaiias are not altogether de- 
void of religious significance. The sacrifices may be 
divided into four classes : First those which were per- 
formed for a father in behalf of a son too young to 
perform them in his own person, concerning which 
there is nothing special to remark except the belief 
which underlay such an act, that in some way the 
young life was in relation with the divine life before 
it became conscious of the fact. The second great 
sacrifice was when the child came to maturity, and 
was invested with the sacred cord, when the son was 
said to be '' born again." However limited may 
have been the idea connected with re-birth, the fact 
that such a thought should have been in the minds 
of the people, that the son of a Brahman was not 
necessarily pure, but needed by some voluntary act 
to assume the responsibility of a holy life, carries 
with it the promise of better things. Of the sacri- 
fices on the lighting of the fire in the new home, and 
the sacrifices of the new moon and the full moon, it 
is not necessary to speak. 

The Brahmanas, as we have already seen, contain 
not only the directions for the sacrifices, but a run- 
ning commentary on the ceremony. And while in 
many cases, we may say in most, the reasons assigned 
for a particular act are puerile in the extreme, yet 
it is something that it should be thought desirable 
to give a reason for any act. A religion cannot 
be altogether debased that tries to give an account 
to its own reason of the things which it teaches as 
essential to salvation ; and a very suggestive thing 
in the Brahmanas is that, not only do they pretend 



66 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

to give a reason for tlie performance of a partic- 
ular act, but in nearly every case it is because in 
some way the gods have done the thing that is com- 
manded. So that the man who lived under that 
system was constantly being stimulated by the re- 
membrance that he was imitating the divine life, 
even though it were no more than in the pouring 
of ghee from one vessel into another. It was not a 
high religious life, but it had within it the germs of 
something better. 

But it is not to the so-called religious books that 
we must look at this time to find the truest marks 
of the religious spirit that was striving to manifest 
itself amid the foolishness of Brahmanism. It has 
been well said that the code of Manu lays down 
" sound, solid, and practical morality." " The very 
ancient and always ingenious and suggestive sym- 
bolism which invests the majority of these usages 
is often of great beauty ; and from the whole there 
stands forth the image of a life at once grave and 
lovable, and which, though bristling somewhat with 
formalities, is nevertheless serviceably active, and in 
nowise morose or inimicable to joyfulness of heart." ^ 

And this code, it must be remembered, is not the 
production of one man, but is the embodiment of the 
real moral convictions of the people released some- 
what, at least in this department of life, from the 
trammels of the religious ceremonial. 

It cannot be too often repeated that all these 
sacrifices were not intended to propitiate the gods. 
They may have been so thought of at times, but in 

^ The Bdigions of India. By A. Barth, trans, by J. Wood, p. 53. 



BRAHMANISM. 67 

the teachings of the Brahmans there was no thought 
of expiation. The simple Vedic belief in the par- 
ticipation of the gods in the family meal led, as we 
have already seen, to a belief that the gods were 
in some way nourished by the sacrifices, and that in 
turn gave way to a belief in the entire dependence 
of the gods upon the right performance of the cere- 
monies. In this way all spirituality passed from 
the rites, and they became a mechanical perform- 
ance in which the worshiper was, as it were, one of 
the cogs in the wheel that must ever keep moving 
or else destruction would fall upon gods and men 
alike. To the sacrifices then was given the name 
Karman^ a word destined to play a most important 
part in the religious history of India. No one, gods 
or men, is free from the necessity of sacrifice, or 
rather not from sacrifice, for that implies a spiritual 
act, but from the mechanical act of the ceremonial. 
Brahmanism reached no lower depth than this, and 
yet I believe that it was indeed the shadow cast by 
a great truth which their minds were no longer able 
to receive, and of which we must speak again, after 
we have considered the attempt which was made by 
philosophy to lift Brahmanism from its degradation. 

This philosophy is embodied in the Upanishads. 
The word comes from a root which means to " sit 
down,'' and from that original idea of sitting at the 
feet of a teacher it came to mean " submission,'^ 
and finally, because of what was taught, the word 
came to mean revelation. The Upanishads belong 
to that division of the Brahmanas called the Aranya- 



68 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

kas, or forest readings. The word is suggestive ; it 
shows that a time had come when men could no 
longer rest satisfied with the performance of a cere- 
monial ; they found it necessary to meditate, and en- 
deavor in some way to renew that intercourse with 
the divine life which had been the glory of the 
Vedic period. They withdrew then to the forests ; 
they abandoned the ceremonial, and tried by medi- 
tation and fasting to draw near to God. Around 
these hermits disciples began to gather, and the great 
problems of life, which the performance of no rite 
can ever solve, were brought to these holy men, and 
the answers written down by those who felt that 
wisdom was the best heritage for their children. It 
was not long before the value of the Upanishads 
was recognized, and when the Brahmanas were ad- 
mitted as a part of the Vedas it was said that the 
very essence and glory of the Vedas was the Upani- 
shads. 

The three words which give us the key to the 
Upanishads are Sat, Atman and Brahma. We have 
seen that in the last development of Vedic thought 
the Kishis had come to speak of the divine essence 
as a neuter principle of life manifesting itself in a 
glorious body in the manifold phenomena of nature ; 
but when, by the advance of civilization, men had 
been drawn from that close contact with nature 
which was a part of the daily life of the authors of 
the Vedic hymns, and society had come to take that 
form in the village life which it has never lost to 
this day ; when schools were opened, and temples 
built, and bazaars sprang up in the crowded streets ; 



BRAHMANISM. 69 

the field, so to speak, for the divine manifestation, 
had changed from natm^e to man. So the religious 
teachers began now to speak less and less of Asura 
and more and more of Sat. 

By Sat they meant what we mean by reality, what 
the Greeks called To ov. What is the unchangeable 
reality ? What is the real thing that lies back of 
all phenomena in nature and in man ? That was 
the question. They never doubted that there was a 
reality ; the problem was how to come near to it. 
What relation did it bear to nature ? What rela- 
tion did it bear to all apparent forms of life ? The 
things which we speak of as real they said were 
unreal ; that everything which was seen was an illu- 
sion, but that back of all illusion lay the self-exist- 
ent unseen reality. The authors of the Upanishads 
would have claimed as their own the words of the 
Christian poet : — 

Change and decay in all around I see ; 

O Thou who changest not, abide with me ! 

The Karman of which the Brahmans had spoken, 
the endless chain which bound gods and men alike 
to the ceremonial, these teachers of the Upanishads 
recognized to be far more than a ceremonial law. 
Cause worked itself out in effect ; the effect itself 
became a cause. All life was an endless chain of 
birth and re-birth, but at the centre of all the eddies 
of life there was eternal calm, — there was Sat. 

But the cause of the rise of philosophy was not an 
interest in speculation ; far from it. Philosophy was 
but a means to an end, which was escape from the 
burden of existence. That any one should deliber- 



70 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

ately devote himself to any other end is, to the Hin- 
du, incomprehensible. 

Any one who has been in India, and has come 
in contact with the high caste natives, must have 
been struck with the silent contempt with which 
they view the English triumphs in engineering. 
Eoad building and all other evidences of material 
progress are to them what the lifting of a heavy 
stone would be to a scholar of feeble frame. They 
do not envy the men who can do these things ; they 
only wonder that they should care to do them ! The 
Hindu mind has changed but little in two thousand 
years, and the problem then as now has always been 
how to escape from the illusion of life and find 
peace in Yoga, that is, in union with the unchange- 
able reality. Of course, it was not possible to pre- 
vent questions arising in the minds of their schol- 
ars in regard to the great mysteries of life, but all 
the efforts of the teacher were directed to diverting 
them from any thought which did not tend directly 
to Yoga. Thus, in the beginning of the Svetasva- 
tara Upanishad,^ we read, " The Brahma students 
say : Is Brahman the cause ? Whence are we born ? 
Whereby do we live, and whither do we go? O 
ye who know Brahman, tell us at whose command 
we abide, whether in pain or in pleasure ? " But the 
teachers would turn them from all speculation, and 
so bade them meditate on Brahman as he is revealed 
in the heart of man ; in that way only can they 

^ In quoting from the Upanishads the translation of The Sacred 
Books of the East, ed. by F. Max Miiller is used, and the references 
will be made to them. 



BRAHMANISM. 71 

hope to attain to the knowledge of the sages who 
know God as he is in himself, which, when a man 
knows, "all fetters fall off ," sufferings are destroyed, 
and birth and death cease. ^ 

In that state a man realizes the Yoga, that is, the 
union of the divine within and without. Before that 
union could be effected, however, it was necessary that 
the distinctions in the divine should be recognized. 

The reality which lay at the root of all the illu- 
sions of life they called, as we have seen. Sat. Yet 
that word seldom, if ever, occurs in the Upanishads. 
The reason is, that the authors of the later Vedas had 
two other words which they used to express the divine 
life : one was Brahman and the other was Atman, 
and Sat was the reality in which these two manifes- 
tations of it existed ; to use terms borrowed from 
Christian theology, Om is the Ovcrla of which Sat, 
Atman, and Brahman are the 'YTroarao-ci?. 

It was Sat who later was named by the mysterious 
syllable Om. This word, w^hich originally meant 
"That" or "Yea," expressed with sublime simplicity 
all that in the last resort they could say of the 
eternal life that it is the eternal yea. 

Om means Brahman. Om means all this. Om means 
obedience. 

Beyond the senses is the mind. Beyond the mind is the 
highest created Being. Higher than that Being is the 
Great Self. Higher than the Great is the highest Unde- 
veloped. Beyond the Undeveloped is the Person, the all- 
pervading and entirely imperceptible. Every creature 

^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 231. 



72 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

that knows him is liberated, and obtains immortality. 
His form is not to be seen. No one beholds him with the 
eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the 
mind. Those who know this are immortal.-^ 

The person with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a 
thousand feet, having compassed the earth on every side 
extends beyond it by ten fingers' breadth.^ 

Its hands and feet are everywhere ; its eyes and head 
are everywhere ; its ears are everywhere ; it stands en- 
compassing all in the world.^ 

The face of the True is covered with a golden disk. 
Open that, O Sun, that we may see the nature of the True. 

O Sun, only seer, . . . spread thy rays and gather them ! 

The light which is the fairest form, I see it. I am 
what he is. Breath to air and to the immortal ! Then 
this my body ends in ashes. Om ! Mind ! remember ! 
Eemember thy deeds ! Mind, remember ! Kemember 
thy deeds ! 

Agni lead us on to beatitude by a good path, thou O 
God who knowest all things ! Keep far from us crooked 
evil, and we shall offer thee the fullest praise.* 

Lord of the Universe glory to thee ! Thou art the Self 
of all ; thou art the maker of all, the en j oyer of all ; thou 
art all life, and the lord of all pleasures and joy. Glory 
to thee, the tranquil, the deeply hidden, the incomprehen^ 
sible, the immeasurable, without beginning and without 
end.^ 

But it was impossible that the religious want could 
be satisfied by a life so far removed from man ; and 

1 Sacred Books of the East, yoL xv. p. 22. 

2 That is, beyond man's power of computation. 
^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 247. 

* Ibid. vol. XV. p. 199. 
s Ibid. vol. XV. p. 303. 



BRAHMANISM. 73 

SO, while the unchangeable reality was often spoken 
of as Brahman or breath, still it is in terms that im- 
ply the distance that stretches between the human 
and the divine. So the problem that always per- 
plexed them was, how the individual who in his na- 
ture is partaker of the illusions of life is to reach 
the Sat who is at the centre of all ? 

They answered that problem by asserting that in 
every individual there is also dwelling the eternal 
reality which when so considered they called Atman. 
This word Atman is translated in the " Sacred Books 
of the East " by the English word '' self." But we 
shall make a great mistake if we suppose that by the 
word " self " they meant the individual life. '' To 
enter one's self " meant " to know the Atman ; " but 
when they spoke of " self " they meant that eternal 
reality which existed not only at the centre of all 
life but also dwelt in the individual. 

As we read the Upanishads we find that they 
sometimes use the word Brahman as synonymous 
with Atman : thus they will say, '' One must know 
the Atman," or, " one must know the Brahman." 
They were convinced that if they could know the 
Atman or the Brahman, they could reach that calm 
which all the disturbances and eddies of life circle 
round but never move. 

No wonder they longed for release when this is 
what they thought of life. 

O Saint, what is the use of the enjoyment of pleas- 
ures in this offensive, pithless, body — a mere mass of bones, 
sinews, skin, marrow, flesh, seed, blood, mucus, tears. 



74 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

phlegm, ordure, water, bile, and slime ! What is the use 
of the enjoyment of pleasures in the body which is as- 
sailed by lust, hatred, greed, delusion, fear, anguish, jeal- 
ousy, separation from what is loved, union with what is 
not loved, hunger, thirst, old age, illness, grief, and other 
evils ? ^ 

Now the way of escape from all these miseries 
was by " knowledge." But here let us guard 
against a misunderstanding of terms. The Hindu 
mind had no interest in the search for truth, as such. 
The playful skepticism of the Greek mind, which 
played at battledoor and shuttlecock with the prob- 
lems of life, the Hindu would have regarded with 
unspeakable disgust. The playful agnosticism of 
Socrates would have seemed to them impious. They 
were much more in accord with the utilitarianism of 
modern physical science, though words would have 
failed them to express their contempt for men who 
deliberately devoted themselves to the utilization of 
material things while the reality, which alone could 
deliver from endless miseries, was still undiscovered : 
such an one was like a man who should carve out 
figures from the morning mist and dream that they 
would remain as monuments of his genius! "The 
only subject," says Prof. Monier Williams,^ '' which 
has power to rouse them from their normal condition 
of mental torpor is religion." Philosophy then was 
to them only a means to an end, and every statement 
of philosophy must be interpreted by its religious 
bearing : so when they say that peace is to be ob- 

1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 288. 

2 Beligious Thought and Life in India. 



BRAHMANISM. 75 

tained by " knowledge " we must understand that the 
authors of the Upanishads were in the habit of speak- 
ing of the religious ceremonies as " ignorance," so 
that " knowledge " originally meant meditation as op- 
posed to ritual. But their minds could not rest sat- 
isfied with a mere negation, and so we find them speak- 
ing of " knowledge " as the acquaintance with the 
esoteric teaching of the Vedas as opposed to a fa- 
miliarity with the routine of the sacrifices. 

Indeed to him who thus knows this Brahma- Upanishad 
(i. e,, the secret doctrine of the Yedas) the sun does not 
rise and set. For him there is day once and for all. 
A father may tell that doctrine of Brahma to his eldest 
son, or to a worthy pupil. But no one should tell it to 
any one else, even if he gave him the whole sea-girt earth, 
full of treasures ; for this doctrine is worth more than 
that, yea it is worth more.^ 

But there was a farther step yet taken in this def- 
inition of knowledge. It was not enough to iden- 
tify it with acquaintance with certain formulas of 
the Veda to which perhaps a purely arbitrary inter- 
pretation might be given ; and so we find in the 
Upanishads "knowledge" spoken of as the New 
Testament speaks of " faith," as the exercise of the 
spiritual nature so as to identify one's self with the 
object of faith or knowledge. In the second Kanda 
of the Mundaka Upanishad we read, "He who 
knows the Self, knows that highest home of Brah- 
man, in which all is contained and shines brightly. 
The wise who, without desiring happiness, worships 
^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 44. 



76 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

that person, transcends his seed," i. e., he is not born 
again.^ 

That Self cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by 
understanding, nor by much learning. He whom 
the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained, 
when the Self chooses him (his body) as his own. 

Nor is that Self to be gained by one who is destitute of 
strength, or without earnestness, or without right medita- 
tion. But if the wise man strives after it by these means 
. . . then his Self enters into the home of Brahman. 

When they have reached him (the Self) the sages be- 
come satisfied through knowledge, they are conscious of 
their Self, their passions have passed away, and they are 
tranquil. The wise, having reached him who is omni- 
present everywhere,^ devoted to the Self, enter into him 
wholly. 

As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their 
name and their form, thus a wise man, freed from name 
and form, goes to the divine person, who is greater than 
the great (^. e., than self). 

He who knows that highest Brahman becomes even 
Brahman. In his race no one is born ignorant of Brah- 
man. He overcomes evil ; free from the fetters of the 
heart, he becomes immortal.^ 

1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 40. 

2 This is not a mere tautology. Brahmanic Pantheism was the 
belief that God was equally present everywhere. The consequence 
was that it was unable to emphasize the quality of the divine 
presence. That necessitates the predication of personality. While 
it is true to say that God is omnipresent, meaning (as Coleridge 
says) that '* all things are present to God," it is equally true to say 
that in Jesus, as in no one else, *' dwelt aU the fulness of the God- 
head bodily." That was a distinction Brahmanism could not make, 
for it never predicated ' * quality ' ' of God. 

^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. pp. 40, 41. 



BRAHMANISM. 77 

Knowledge then meant self-knowledge. To know 
that in one's self dwelt the Eternal ; that in it man 
had his being would bring peace, would assure man 
that he was not a creature of a moment, would lead 
him to feel that his home was with the Eternal. So 
Sat, Om, Brahman, was called Atman, Self. 

See how wonderfully this is expressed in the 
Khandogya-Upanishad. 

The intelligent, whose body is spirit, whose form is 
light, whose thoughts are true, whose nature is like ether 
(omnipresent and invisible), from whom all works, all 
desires, all sweet odors and tastes proceed ; he who em- 
braces all this, who never speaks and is never surprised, 
he is myself within the heart, smaller than a corn of bar- 
ley, smaller than a mustard seed. . . . He also is myself 
within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than the 
sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds. 

He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odors 
and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never 
speaks and is never surprised, he is myself within the 
heart, is that Brahman. When I shall have departed 
hence I shall obtain that Atman. -^ 

Let me quote one more saying before leaving this 
wonderful history of man's thought of God. 

Know that the person within all beings, not heard 
here, not reached, not thought, not subdued, not seen, not 
understood, not classed, but hearing, thinking, seeing, 
classing, sounding, understanding, knowing, is the Self.^ 

This Sat Brahma, Atman is Om, is One.^ 

1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 48. 

2 Ibid. 

^ Prof. Williams would make Brahma — from a root meaning 



78 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

He who dwells in the water and within the water, 
whom the water does not know, whose body the water is, 
and who rules the water within, he is thyself, the ruler 
within, the immortal.^ 

For the man who has by knowledge identified 
himself with the Eternal there remains the immortal 
life, the life freed from all the miseries because de- 
livered from the illusion. 

By the old age of the body that does not age ; by the 
death of the body that is not killed.^ 

The Brahman is the true being set in the body. It is 
the Self ; free from sin, free from old age, free from 
death and grief, from hunger and thirst; which desires 
and imagines nothing but what it has. 

For those who know this, death is but the casting 
away of a dead body, as the snake sloughs off its 
skin on an ant-hill, that the immortal Self may enter 
into the unconditioned Self. 

But on the other hand — 

Those who depart from hence without having discov- 
ered the Self and those true desires, for them there is no 
freedom in all the worlds.^ 

The true desires are hidden by what is false, as people 
who do not know the country walk again and again over 
the gold treasure that has been hidden somewhere in the 
earth and do not discover it. Thus ao all those creatures 

"to increase "— the '^ Essence," and Sat and Atman manifesta- 
tions thereof, but the theological thought of the Upanishads seems 
to have been in a state of flux, so that almost anything may find 
support. 

1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 133. 

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 126. 
« Ibid. vol. i. p. 127. 



BRAHMANISM. 79 

do who going into the Brahma-world yet do not discover 
it, because they are carried away by untruth. They do 
not discover the true Self in Brahman, that Self which 
abides in the heart. ^ 

It is easy to see how such a doctrine might be 
corrupted ; and we have the story of a great misun- 
derstanding on the part of certain of the disciples. 
We are told that on one occasion certain men came 
to a learned teacher and besought him to instruct 
them in the way of Self, and he replied, " The per- 
son that is seen in the eye, that is the Self ; " ^ by 
which he meant, the image that is beheld with the 
inward eye and not with the eye of sense. But they 
supposing him to mean the minute image which 
every child has seen and wondered at, asked if they 
beheld this image reflected in a mirror or in the 
water would that be seeing the " Self," to which the 
sage contemptuously replies " yes." So they go their 
way and adorn themselves in their best clothes, and 
then looking into the water, and beholding the image 
of themselves reflected therein, return and say that 
they have seen the " Self ; " and as they depart the 
sage says in bitter irony, '' they both go away with- 
out having perceived and without having known the 
Self, and whosoever will follow this doctrine will 
perish. But they went their way and preached that 
men should worship the self, i, e., the body, and that 
whosoever will worship the self and serve the self 
will gain both this world and the next ! " ^ 

1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 129. 

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 135. 

3 Ibid vol. i. pp. 133-135. 



80 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

These extracts will be enough to bring before our 
minds clearly the fundamental doctrines of Brah- 
manism ; it remains now to compare them with the 
Gospel of the Christ. But this cannot be done as 
the Master himself would have done it, unless we ap- 
proach the subject with reverence. Nothing is more 
truly atheistic than the tone in which men some- 
times speak of the solemn speech of God's children 
concerning what he has done for their souls. Let 
us avoid that error and recognize that while it was 
incomplete, growing up in the midst of human cor- 
ruption and sin, while there is much that is false, 
much that is absurd, much that was unworthy of 
men to whom the Spirit of God was speaking, yet 
in the sacred book of Brahmanism there is essential 
truth. First, then, we find a statement of the truth 
that spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned, 
and that the glory of man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things which he possesses, but in 
his recognition of the indwelling of the divine life. 
And if this be so, whence came it ? To say that it 
was man's discovery while truths which were devel- 
oped through the history of Israel were God's reve- 
lation, is to strike at the root of all religion : for it 
is to assert that what is true may come apart from 
God ! It denies that God '' has made of one " all na- 
tions, " that they might seek after him and find him." 
" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights 
in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn- 
ing." The truth in Israel was God's revelation to 
Israel, the truth in India was God's revelation to 



BRAHMANISM. 81 

the Hindu. But this spiritual sympathy with what 
they received must not blind our eyes to their failure 
to make the most of the truth committed to them, 
and the results of that failure are not difficult to find. 

The first downward step was taken, as we have 
seen, when they caused the natural distinctions in 
society to harden into the caste system, — a system 
so rigid that no change has been able permanently 
to overthrow it. This belief in caste made any real 
gospel to the poor impossible — even made it seem 
undesirable. So that all the sublime spiritual truths 
which we acknowledge with delight were for a very 
limited class of society. It is true that the best 
minds could not rest satisfied with the caste system 
as it first took shape. We have seen that the sacri- 
fices preached the necessity of a new birth even for 
the Brahman, and later it was said that no man could 
attain to Self whom the Self did not choose. Had 
they been able to follow out the path that the thought 
of election opened before them the result might have 
been different ; it might have led them to ask them- 
selves the purpose that lay back of election ; they 
might have laid hold of the sublime teaching of 
Israel, that election is the witness to the divine care 
for all, and thus the caste system might have been 
broken. But it was not so. They asserted that the 
Self chose only those who were strong and serious 
and self-denying; but that doctrine only served to 
intensify their belief in individual merit, and so lay 
the whole burden of salvation upon the individual. 
The consequence was that, having first separated the 
6 



82 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Brahman class from all others, and then separated 
the Brahmans themselves into the elect and the non- 
elect, and having insisted that this election was the 
result of individual merit, they developed a self -con- 
sciousness which became unbearable, and salvation 
presented itself to them as escape from this individu- 
ality which was a burden too heavj^^ for them to bear. 

If we turn now from the early Brahmanic theory 
of man to the belief in the divine life, we shall see 
that they came nearer to the truth. We have seen 
that the sacrifices were enjoined as imitations of cer- 
tain godlike deeds. The authors of the Brahmanas 
even asserted that the creation of the world was an 
act accompanied by sacrifices. Now leaving out of 
sight the gross form which this thought assumed, — 
the cutting up of a huge giant — is there not really 
a profound truth hidden in this teaching ? I think 
so. They could not but feel that in some way the 
divine life must participate in that which was such 
an essential part of human life. The grossest form 
of heathen sacrifice has witnessed to man's belief 
that there was something magnanimous in the di- 
vine nature, for I do not believe any people have 
believed that they could make a payment which 
would satisfy the divine demand ; they must always 
have felt that they would show their good intention, 
and trust that the will would be accepted for the 
deed. And if this was true of those sacrifices which 
were ostensibly propitiatory in their nature, much 
more must it have been so of those of which we are 
now speaking. In some way the Hindus felt that 
the divine life had experienced sacrifice. 



BRAHMANISM. 83 

Now that is a belief into which the teaching of 
Christ fits exactly. The cross of Jesus is not the 
revelation of an awful violation of the divine nature ; 
it is the revelation of the divine life. Sacrifice 
becomes painful, '' exceeding sorrowful, even unto 
death," only because it is done in an atmosphere of 
sin. The sacrifice of Jesus was the witness to the 
essential divinity of sacrifice. " I have power to 
lay down my life, and I have power to take it again ; 
this commandment have I received of my father." 
" Therefore my Father loveth me, because I lay 
down my life that I might take it again." The di- 
vine life then, whether it is considered as Father or 
Son, delights in sacrifice. It was with that truth in 
mind that St. Peter wrote of Jesus, "He was the 
lamb slain before the foundation of the world." We 
can claim then as divine truth the Brahmanic belief 
that creation was an act of sacrifice. 

Yet when we try to bring these two thoughts to- 
gether, we see the weakness of the whole Brahmanic 
system. There seems to have been no power in the 
Hindu mind to compare " spiritual things with spir- 
itual." If a Brahman found a pearl of great price, 
he would not sell all that he had and buy it ! He 
would simply be content to gaze at it. 

It would never occur to him that it might be util- 
ized, he would never expect to find another, and if he 
did he would have no power to join the two. He would 
simply meditate upon its beauty in the hope that by 
such meditation he might grow like it, and in that 
way " shuffle off " this " too, too solid flesh." That 



84 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

is why Braliinanism failed in its attempts to attain 
Yoga, or union with the divine, and so yielded to 
the efforts of Buddha. It was by the recognition of 
sacrifice as the essence of the divine life, and par- 
ticipation in that sacrifice, that Jesus said escape 
from the bondage of this world lay. " If any man 
will do God's will he shall know of the doctrine," 
and that truth (or doctrine) he said would make 
men free. But it seems never to have occurred to 
the Brahmanic mind so to utilize truth ! They said 
that what they longed for was union with the divine 
life. But when we look at the character of that 
union we see that it was not the Christian atone- 
ment, but what they called " aioneness." That is to 
say, what they wanted was that the Self which dwelt 
in their body should so absorb their individuality 
that nothing but that Self would remain. That they 
thought would bring them peace. But humanity can- 
not so easily destroy itself as that. No real peace, 
the history of the human soul has shown, can come, 
save through the consciousness of the atonement. 
" I and my Father are one." Yet " My Father is 
greater than I." " Glorify me, O Father, with the 
glory which I had with thee before the worlds 
v/ere." It is eternal life to know the Father and the 
Son. The consciousness of union can only follow 
the consciousness of distinction. A distinction which 
is the result of the mysterious act of " begetting." 
With profound spiritual insight, the creed asserts 
that the eternal Son is begotten, not made. He is 
an impartation of the divine life. The faith of the 
Church is that but one has realized that Sonship, but 



BRAHMANISM. 85 

that all are created to realize it. The Upanishads 
said, " Sacrifice because the Devas sacrificed, but the 
one thing needful is knowledge, for that will result 
in " aloneness." The gospel says the one thing need- 
ful is faith ; faith is sacrificial in its character and 
therefore divine. Perfect faith is perfect atone- 
ment, and perfect atonement is knowledge of Father 
and Son. 

The more we look into this wonderful system the 
more profoundly are we impressed with its anticipa- 
tion of Christian truth, and yet at its failure to ap- 
preciate the bearing of that truth. We have seen 
one illustration of this : look now at that funda- 
mental Brahmanic belief that the one reality, Sat 
alone, remains " the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever." The words of St. John are truly Brah- 
manic : " All that is in the world, the lust of the 
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, 
are not of the Father but are of the world, and the 
world passeth away, and the lust thereof." But 
when he added, '' He that doeth the will of God 
abideth forever," it would have meant nothing to 
them, because they knew of no will in the sense in 
which that word is used in the Bible, — the self- 
conscious participation in the divine purpose. 

For Sat had no purpose. Purpose implies good 
or evil intent — they would not have ascribed evil 
purpose, but they could not have ascribed good — 
the essence of the reality was unmoved and un- 
movable indifference. Sat was nothing but power. 
It is here that the divergence between the gospel of 
Jesus and Brahmanism is the greatest. Jesus's 



86 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

teaching is full of the thought of the power of God, 
but it is always spoken of as a power mighty to 
save. The power of God is the power of a father ; 
it is simply thought of as love manifesting itself 
against selfishness ; we are conscious of power only 
because we see that there is friction. 

The Brahman sits dumb before the immensity of 
divine power; Jesus thinks of the divine power 
as the possibility that lies in the background, and 
says : " Father, all things are possible with thee, do 
not let my will be done ! " The God of Jesus is a 
God who is love. 

A 

In the doctrine of Atman again we see the same 
approximation and subsequent recoil. The real life 
of the divine is in the heart of man. " Do not think 
of the divine life as far off;" the Upanishads are say- 
ing on every page, " it is near ; it is in the heart of 
man." ^ But Jesus said the same, '' The kingdom of 
God is within you." " Realize the true Self," said 
Brahmanism ; in the parable of the Prodigal Son 
Jesus set his seal to the truth of this teaching, when 
he declared that when the wanderer turned from the 
illusions of life '' He came to himseZ/l" You cannot 
know what the " Highest Uncreated Being is unless 
you see Him in the life of man." That is the very 
essence of the gospel. ''No man hath seen God at 
any time ; the only begotten which is in the bosom 
of the Father, He hath declared Him." 

But here again the parallel ceases. The result 

1 A favorite saying was : ' ' The City of Brahman is the hody of 
man." Like St. Paul's saying : *' Your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost." 



BRAHMANISM. 87 

of Atmanship is the destruction of humanity. 
The result of Sonship is the glorification of hu- 
manity. " Father, I will that they whom thou hast 
given me be with me where I am, that they may 
behold my glory." The whole gospel abounds with 
the joy of redemption, the atonement with God. 
It is the long story of the " riches of the glory of 
his inheritance in the saints." 

The same characteristics meet us in the next 
article of the Brahmanic creed. For in the word 
Brahman they seem again to have anticipated the 
gospel. For Brahman means breath. And they 
believed that man could breathe that breath into 
himself and so participate in the divine life. But 
when we come to look into the matter a little more 
closely, we find that the word means to them nothing 
but breath. There seems to be no such subtle dis- 
tinction as we find in the gospel between the ''blow- 
ing wind and the breathing Spirit." In other words, 
Brahman was without character. The consequence 
was that Brahmanism was without hope. There was 
never the divine intoxication of joy such as we read 
of in the gospel as following the consciousness of 
the Spirit's indwelling, so marked that it led the 
unbelievers to ascribe the joyful outburst to the 
" drunkenness of new wine." There came with the 
inbreathing of Brahman no sense of a comforter, a 
teacher, leading into truth. It may be said that 
such effects could only follow the revelation of the 
divinity of humanity by the incarnation ; but Brah- 
manism had no prophecy of such a dispensation as 
we find in the Hebrew prophets. 



88 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

And the reason of this is to be found, I think, 
in the fact that they were utterly ignorant of the 
Hebrew experience of '' the pouring out of the 
Spirit," all that they knew of was the inbreathing of 
the divine breath, and the result was not spiritual 
intoxication; it was loss of spiritual consciousness. 
They partook not of a stimulant, but of a drug ! 

Yet no man who knows that these men were striv- 
ing to know the truth should doubt that the Father 
of All saw them, felt them feeling after Him if 
haply they might find Him. When we remember 
that this was their creed : the belief in the divine 
as the one reality; the belief that in every Brah- 
man that reality dwelt ; the belief that if man could 
once know that image he would see Him who is in- 
visible ; the belief that for that man must in some 
way breathe the divine life into himself; the belief 
that the result of this struggle against the illusion 
of life, though it be for the present painful, will, in 
the end, be the perfection of life, in which there 
will be no more sorrow, no more parting, no more 
pain ; no man who knows that ought to hesitate to 
say of Brahmanism, " It was not far from the king- 
dom of God." 

Yet it was not the kingdom of God, for this Sat, 
Brahman, and Atman, wherever found, was essen- 
tially inert. ^ It was, as they constantly said, a 
" treasure hid in a field ; " it had no power to 
bring itself to the surface ; man must seek for it 

^ Since this was written, attention has been called to the same 
characteristic in the writings of Plato. "In the TimceuSj he 
pictures God as the passive Deity, at an infinite distance in the 



BRAHMANISM. 89 

and find it. Tlie consequence was that men divided 
themselves into two classes ; those who sought for 
release from illusion by ceremonial rites, and those 
who reached out for Atmanship by an act of the 
will. The Upanishads recognize both ; the first 
they call the way of ignorance, which it is admitted 
must be the path for most men ; but the more ex- 
cellent way is a counsel of perfection, to which only 
a few are expected to attain. But the outcome of 
both was the same ; those who practiced the cere- 
monial did not find the peace they sought, and con- 
sequently increased the intensity of their austerities 
until they degenerated into the fearful, revolting, 
and degrading self-inflicted tortures of modern India, 
which are supposed by many educated people to be 
the essence of Brahmanism. 

On the other hand, there were the philosophers 
who sought for Sat by an act of the will, which, be- 
ginning with meditation, ended in a condition hardly 
to be distinguished from stupor. The end in both 
ways was the same, — the destruction of the active 
powers of mind or body. 

It is just here that the doctrine of Jesus, so akin 
to Brahmanism, takes its place. No Brahman ever 
preached the doctrine of Sat more earnestly than 
Jesus. Almost his last words were, " To this end 

heavens, unable to come into immediate contact with a world of 
which the very materials contain the conditions of evil. ' ' ( Continuity 
of Christian Thought, by A. V. G. Allen, p. 43. ) It is here sug-gested 
that this is akin to Buddhism, but I venture to think that it is rather 
akin to Brahmanism. God did not appear inert to Buddha because 
of the prevalence of evil, but because the only God of whom he had 
heard was the Brahmanic God who was essentially inert. 



90 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

was I born, and for this cause came I into the world 
that I might bear witness unto the truth," unto the 
one reality, unto Sat. 

It is the same with the doctrine of Atman. When 
at the last the perplexed disciples ask, by the mouth 
of Philip, for a revelation of the invisible God 
which could not be doubtful, Jesus answered, " Have 
I been so long with you and hast thou not known me, 
Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father 
also." 

Now all this was Brahmanic doctrine, only no 
Brahman had ever been able to announce himself 
as the Atman, and had he done so the instinct of 
humanity would have revolted against him, for in 
such a case there must be success or the most ig- 
nominious failure. Yet this is what Jesus dared ; 

A 

declared that he was the Atman, the one perfect 
image of the invisible Sat, and yet claimed all men 
as sharers in that eternal Atmanship, and could 
offer for them no higher prayer than that they might 
be conscious of that truth, " I in them and thou in 
me, that they may be made perfect in One." 

Now had the gospel stopped here it would only 
have shown a remarkable coincidence between Se- 
mitic and Aryan speculation, but it went farther. If 
St. Paul had been acquainted with the Upanishads, 
he could not have rebuked the Brahmans more per- 
fectly than he has done in the Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, where, warning his people against the effort 
to find God, he says, " Say not in thy heart who shall 
ascend into heaven, or who shall descend into the 
deep," for the good news has been brought you that 



BRAHMANISM. 91 

God is seeking you^ and, that you may be redeemed 
from the body of death, the Word is in your " mouth 
and in your heart." 

The revelation of God as Sat, the revelation of 
Jesus — and so of humanity as the Atman, would 
not be complete without the revelation of the divine 
life as an energizing spirit seeking for that which, 
amid the illusions of life, is lost. If we might epito- 
mize the teaching of Brahmanism, we would say that 
it is to be found in the first part of the parable 
which tells us of the son who " came to himse//"," 
and began to seek his father ; but the gospel of Jesus 
is all told in that same parable where the divine is 
pictured, not as waiting in supreme indifference for 
that return, but as a father who saw the son '' a long 
way off and ran and fell on his neck and kissed 
him." 

This is indeed the typical parable, but it is so be- 
cause it embodies that which was, all through the 
gospel, the revelation of God's self-impartation. The 
eternal unchangeable reality condescends to man's 
weakness that it may reveal itself. The truth speaks 
so as to be understood by " babes and sucklings." 
The " image of the unseen God " is seen and handled 
of men. The shepherd seeks the sheep that is lost. 
The king dies that the subject may be drawn in loy- 
alty to him. 

In its analysis, if such a word maybe used, of the 
divine being, Brahmanism was not far from the 
statements of Christian theology. In its faith that 
rest could only be found in union ; it bore witness to 
the truth ; but where it failed was in its ignorance 



92 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

of grace, the spirit " helping our infirmities," and 
so leading through a Saviour to a Father. That this 
is not a mere guess will be seen when we come to 
Brahmanism in its later form of Hinduism, where it 
will be found that " grace " was the thought which 
underlay the revival after the expulsion of the 
Buddhists. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 

We have spoken of Brahmanism as if it consisted 
of a uniform system of thought. But this is far 
from being the case. The fundamental ideas are 
the same indeed, in all the systems, but it was not 
long before Indian philosophy divided into two dis- 
tinct lines, diverging more and more from a common 
principle. It forms no part of the plan of this book 
to enter into a consideration of Indian metaphysics, 
but it will be necessary to glance hurriedly at the 
pathway which philosophic speculation took in the 
seventh century before our era ; for there we shall 
find at once the cause of the decline of Brahmanism 
and the rise of Buddhism. 

It was, perhaps, the somewhat feeble rationalism 
of the Brahmanas, that caused the rise of the Mi- 
mansa school. 

It can hardly be called a philosophy and is not so 
counted by writers on the history of philosophy ; it 
was rather the expression of a reaction against the 
too free handling of religious questions. '' The 
foundation of belief and conduct," said Djaimini, 
the founder of the Mimansa, " is to be discovered 



94 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

in the Vedas ; to them we must turn." ^ If it was 
objected that the real difficulty consists in finding 
the meaning of the Vedas, the answer was ready. 
" It is to be found, not by speculation, but by tradi- 
tion. What have the holy men of old declared they 
were taught by their fathers ? That is the way to 
find the truth. Alongside of the letter there has 
come the tradition which interprets the letter. From 
the solution of speculative questions, which, as we 
have seen, never had special interest for the Hindu 
mind, the school of Mimansa went on to solve ques- 
tions of conscience by the same infallible rule of 
^ Quod semper quod uhique quod ah omnibus,'^ " 
The chief interest of the Mimansa school lies in the 
fact that it was the precursor of the Vedanta school, 
of which we shall speak in a moment. 

At the opposite pole of thought is found the sys- 
tem of Gautama,^ called the Nyaya or ^'Analysis." 
The word analysis is sufficient to assure us that this 
school would not be destined to have great influence 
in India. The Indian mind is impatient of delay in 
the discovery of the goal which it seeks ; if that be 
at once pointed out, then the teacher may spend the 
rest of life in developing the results of the discovery, 
but the "Deliverance" must not be delayed. There- 
fore the Nyaya school with its hair-splitting distinc- 
tions, which promised so much and led to nothing, 
had no such career in India as it had in Greece, 
where the delight was not in the discovery but in 
the search for truth. 

^ Cousin, vol. ii. Lect. V. 

2 Not of course to be confounded with Sakyamouni. 



TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 95 

Probably because of this inability to continue long 
in the analysis of thought, the Nyaya school passed 
into the Veiseshika, or philosophy of physical re- 
search. The outcome was the anatomical theory of 
the universe, ending in materialism, and, except in 
the stronger few, in the lowest form of Epicureanism. 
" So long as life lasts, delight thyself and live well ; 
when once the body is reduced to ashes, it will 
revive no more." ^ 

It was when Indian thought had reached the chaos 
that was sure to follow on the enunciation of Epi- 
cureanism that there arose a school of thought which 
declared that the solution of the problem of life was 
to be found only by determining to what the origin 
of life is to be ascribed. Kapila, the founder of the 
great Sankhyan philosophy, took up the problem of 
life where it had been dropped by the Veiseshikan 
school. 

Kapila had no quarrel with that school because of 
its methods ; he complained because it did not go far 
enough. It may be true that the origin of the visi- 
ble universe is the result of the "fortuitous con- 
course of atoms," but to what are we to ascribe the 
origin of the atoms ? It would be instructive — if 
our subject were the history of philosophy — to note 
how in ancient days, as now, all attempts to account 
for the things which are seen lead sooner or later to 

1 This anticipation o£ '* let us eat and drink for to-morrow we 
die " is attributed to the Sokayatas, an obscure sect, which analogy 
would lead us to conclude was an offshoot of the Veiseshikan. See 
Hdigions of India ^ Barth. p. 86. 



96 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the introduction of a principle which is not seen. 
The unknown and unknowable mystery back of all 
phenomena of Herbert Spencer has been antedated 
by the Prakriti of Kapila. Prakriti seems to have 
been an ethereal principle of life having the power 
of self-fertilization. What is needed, said Kapila, 
is knowledge of the universe, and that v/ill save men 
from all the miseries of illusion. And that knowl- 
edge is to be obtained neither by meditation, nor by 
the analysis of the mind, nor by the voice of tra- 
dition, but by sensation. Matter produces sensation 
and sensation produces intelligence. Where there 
is no sensation there is no intelligence. In other 
words, we can know nothing which cannot be appre- 
hended by the senses.^ Of course all this did not 
pass without protest. The idea of cause and effect, 
it was answered, does not come from sensation : 
whence comes it ? The idea of cause and effect, an- 
swered Kapila, is a delusion ; it has no sensible basis. 
Cause is only a preceding effect. If nature had 
never existed it could never have been created, for 
there would have been nothing with which to create 
it. Nature is its own cause. Nature is the cause of 
intelligence. There can, therefore, be no intelligence 
higher than nature ; there can be no God. 

The great rival of the Sankhyan philosophy was 
the Yedantan which, as we have seen, was an out- 
growth of the Mimansa. The school of authority 
was compelled to let in the reason as an arbiter 

^ A full account of this system will be found in Cousin, vol. ii. 
LectV. 



TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 97 

along with tradition and so while the Vedantan 
school, as its name implies,^ pretended to reverence 
authority, it soon became in the best sense rational- 
istic. Its history is not unlike that of English Prot- 
estantism, which attempted to have two standards of 
faith, the tradition of the fathers and the conscience. 
And perhaps for the same reason — that it seemed to 
answer the two different needs that men have always 
experienced, not only of having a truth commend it- 
self to their individual conscience, but also of know- 
ing that the individual conscience is in harmony with 
the universal thought of humanity as far as that can 
be ascertained — the Vedantan philosophy became 
the great bulwark to stem the rising tide of skep- 
ticism. 

Like every other Indian philosophy it began with 
the problem of escape. '' Who will deliver me from 
the body of this death," was as truly the cry of the 
perplexed Hindu as of the sin - smitten Hebrew. 
But to escape, the Pundits of the Vedanta school 
recognized that they must follow the lead of Kapila 
and define the ''Illusion." As "ecc nihilo nihil fit ^^ 
was an axiom from which all Indian speculation be- 
gan, they had to make choice of one of the horns of 
the dilemma. That it was possible to begin by pre- 
mising that matter is an expression of mind never 
occurred to any Indian philosopher. 

You cannot get to mind as an ultimate product of 

matter, for in the very attempt to do so you have already 

begun with mind. The earliest step of any such inquiry 

involves categories of thought, and it is in terms of 

^ Followers of the Vedas, 
7 



98 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

thought that the very problem you are investigating can 
be so much as stated. You cannot start in your investi- 
gations with bare, self-identical, objective facts, stripped of 
every ideal element or contribution from thought. The 
least and lowest fact of outward observation is not an in- 
dependent entity-fact minus mind, and out of which mind 
may somehow or other be seen to emerge ; but it is a fact 
or object as it appears to an observing mindj in the me- 
dium of thought, and having mind as an inseparable fac- 
tor of it.-^ 

So writes the Scotch philosopher in answer to 
modern materialistic theories of the universe, but it 
was impossible that the Vedanta school should have 
used this argument, for to have done so would have 
forced them to admit that the universe is a " fact as 
it appears to an observing mind," L e., to Brahma. 
But this was impossible, because, in the first place, to 
predicate observation of Brahma was to make him 
partaker of the '' Illusion " of personality, and then 
where would escape lie ? Or, if they escaped that 
horror, at least they made him responsible for mat- 
ter, and so the cause of all the evils of life which 
they believed to flow from matter. To use such an 
argument presupposes an acceptance of the funda- 
mental postulates of Christian thought: first, that 
" God saw everything that he had made and behold 
it was very good ; " and the second, that " there is 
nothing either good or bad but tliinhing makes it 
so," i. e., that all the evil of life takes its rise in a 
rebellious will. 

It seemed, therefore, as if the Vedantists must 

1 Philosophy of Beligion^ Caird, p. 95. 



TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM 99 

either accept the dogma of Kapila, that intelligence 
is the offspring of matter, or else declare in favor of 
a sort of dualism. This they did before long, and 
found themselves involved in all the contradictions 
which are sure to flow from such a source. 

This, then, was the Vedantan solution of the prob- 
lem of life. At the centre of all life sits Brahma. 
But from all eternity he has been enveloped in a 
cloud of "Illusion." Out of that Illusion he has 
formed all things that are seen. It is true that it 
seems to us as if the things that are seen had reality, 
but that is because we partake so largely of the 
Illusion that we are not able to free our minds from 
its effects. The result of absorption into Brahma 
will be that we shall see things as they are. We are 
now like men who walk at night and, seeing a rope, 
mistake it for a snake. Their terror is groundless, 
but at the same time it is inevitable. Till the light 
of Brahma comes we shall be subject to fear, but in 
that light we shall see that that which we feared had 
no existence. Nothing is so deceptive as the senses. 
The very objects of them are in a state of perpetual 
flux. That which we predicate of phenomena to-day 
is inapplicable to-morrow. The rolling sun and 
gliding moon and heaving sea and trembling earth 
speak only of instability. There is no reality save 
the unseen life, of which nature is but the waving 
garment. 

Professor Max Miiller is never tired of calling 
our attention to the proof of kinship between the 
Germanic and the Indian peoples to be found in 
the common root from which the words " father," 



100 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

"mother," "daughter," and "home" have sprung. 
But I think we may find a stronger proof of the 
oneness of the human race in these old discussions 
by the banks of the Ganges which sound so modern. 
Then as now the men w^ho w^alked by faith asked 
whence come the thoughts which witness to a home 
unseen, eternal, of the human soul. Then as now they 
had to meet the dogmatism of materialism, which 
simply asserted that all which has not its origin in 
sensation is illusion. It is not without comfori either 
to remember the teachings of Kapila, and note how 
little influence they had on the human race. 

It may seem as if the philosophy of Kapila, 
which led to atheism and nihilism was the logical 
outcome of Indian philosophy, but it is not true, for 
though there is a certain philosophical connection 
between these various schools of thought, a glance 
at the history of Brahmanism is enough to show us 
how it is that men came to be atheists. Atheism 
then, as now, was not the revolt from spiritualism, 
but from ritualism. God the spirit must be wor- 
shiped in spirit. Any attempt to substitute cere- 
monialism for this worship leads to atheism, for 
atheism is the natural follower of materialism, and 
ceremonialism is materialism. If there be one thing 
more than another that the history of religion shows 
us, it is that when men have insisted that God must 
be worshiped in any special mountain, in any special 
way, there have not been wanting voices to assert 
that such a God is no God at all. That God is a 
spirit, and that they that worship Him must w^orship 
Him in " spirit and in truth," the human race has 



TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 101 

been witnessing to by its atheism more truly than 
by its ritualism. The only ground on which ritual- 
ism can be justified, apart from the question of in- 
dividual edification, is, that it pleases God. Of 
course that leads at once to a consideration of the 
character of God. Now, if any age knows all that 
can be known of that character, it is well to embody 
that consciousness in ritual; but if there be a prog- 
ress in that revelation, it is important that it be 
not so embodied, as a rite is difficult to change with- 
out a revolution. And inasmuch as the supposition 
is that ritual is the final statement of truth, this 
revolution is apt to lead to disbelief in the truth, 
i. e., in God. That this is the state of affairs in 
Roman Catholic countries is notorious. The same 
effects followed a like cause in India. 

Ceremonialism continued to be the way for the 
multitude, but the intellectual life of India flowed 
on between the two banks of materialistic atheism 
and idealistic pantheism, sometimes colored by one 
and sometimes by the other. But the great current 
of human life flowed on, unconscious of either. 
Scholars might dispute, but the common people had 
to live. But over life there lay a shadow. Beside 
the patient oxen there walked an unseen presence. 
Under the palm-trees there came a dream of eudless 
rest ; through tlie jungle there came at evening the 
whisper of an unknown tongue. The dying child 
opened his eyes with a startled look of recognition 
and fell back into the darkness that lies just outside 
of life. There was One among them they knew 
not. Was He friend or foe ? No one could tell ; 



102 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

and so the common people crept to the temple door 
and cast in a handful of rice, or placed a wreath 
of yellow flowers on the shrine, and brought the in- 
fant son and laid him down at the idol's feet. If 
the unseen was a friend, he would be glad to be re- 
membered. If he was a foe, perchance he would 
remember the child who had been brought with an 
offering, and pass him over when the other first-born 
fell. 

No one can study the history of India as it was 
six hundred years before Christ without being struck 
with the resemblance to European history just before 
the Reformation. By the Ganges and by the Seine, 
at the foot of the Himalayas and in the valleys of 
the Alps, Nominalist and Eealist disputed, and the 
common people stretched out their hands for God. 
In both periods men had reached a point where 
there must come a reformation or religion would die 
of its own inanity. In both periods the reformer 
came with a gospel to the poor. 



CHAPTER V. 

BUDDHISM. 

Our examination of Indian thought has brought 
us to its culmination in the nihilism of Buddhism ; 
but when we speak of Buddhism, it becomes neces- 
sary to define the limits of our subject, for the field 
is immense. The literature of Buddhism already 
makes a library and is increasing every day; the 
controversies concerning its fundamental doctrines 
bid fair to rival Christian theology. Then, again, it 
is divided into two great churches, the Northern and 
Southern, as unlike as Catholicism and Protestant- 
ism. The disciples of the latter are found in Ceylon, 
Burmah, and Siam ; of the former, in Nepaul, Thibet, 
China, and Japan ; also in Corea, though a recent 
traveler informs us, that Buddhism as an ecclesias- 
tical system is, owing to political reasons, not found 
there. So that when one is speaking of Buddhism, 
it is as important to know whether he has in mind 
" The Great Vehicle " (as the Northern is called), 
or the " Little Vehicle," as its opponents contemptu- 
ously term the canon of the southern church. 

Again, Buddhism as it exists in Thibet, with its 
splendid ritual and august hierarchy, with the Grand 
Lama at its head, is no more like what we may 
call the Congregational Buddhism in Japan, with 



104 HIS STAR .IN THE EAST. 

its thirty-three sects, than the Papal court of Paul 
V. was like the Pilgrim band that gathered in prayer 
about Plymouth Rock. Of all religions, Buddhism 
is the one which has shown itself most susceptible to 
local influences. Mahometanism, though it too has 
its great schism, is practically the same in the palace 
of Persia and in the tents of Arabia ; but Chinese 
Buddhism is not like Nepaulese, and Singhalese Bud- 
dhism differs from the religion of Burmah. 

Again, Buddhism means to some minds a pro- 
found system of philosophy and science ; to others 
an elaborate system of ritual ; to others again, a 
debased idol worship ; while a popular impression 
is gaining ground just now that what is called 
" esoteric " Buddhism is the only true form of the 
doctrine of Gautama ; the representatives of which 
are the modern Yogin of India, the magicians who 
have become independent of the laws of nature. 
Now, undoubtedly, all these systems are in a sense 
related to the teaching of Gautama, but interesting 
as their study may be, they will not teach us what 
Buddhism is; indeed we cannot understand them 
unless we have learned the fundamental dogmas of 
Buddhism, and that can only be done by resorting 
to those teachings of the Great Master and his 
earliest disciples which all Buddhists acknowledge. 
If from these we'can learn what Buddha taught con- 
cerning the Skandhas, Karman, and Nirvana, we 
shall have the key to Buddhism, just as he who has 
learned the meaning of the Incarnation, the Cross, and 
the Resurrection has the key to Christian theology. 
The world has seen but three Catholic religions, and 



BUDDHISM. 105 

they are all the expression of the thought of a per- 
son, Buddhism, Mahometanism, and Christianity, 
and the secret of each is hidden in the life of its 
founder. We need then to glance first at the life 
of the Buddha. 

About 600 years before Christ, there was born 
in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, now the province of 
Oudh, a prince, whose name Siddartha has almost 
been lost sight of in the light of those titles which 
have been given to express the splendor of his noble 
life. The first of these was Gautama, which means 
the ascetic of the Gotamides. A second is Sakya- 
mouni, meaning the solitary one among the Sakyas, 
— the name of the tribe to which he belonged. But 
the name most familiar to us is Buddha the enlight- 
ened one, — the name which one third of the human 
family pronounce with reverence as they turn their 
faces to the better life. It is the expression of the 
highest idea of life among the Aryans, as the word 
Christ was amongst the Hebrews. To be the an- 
ointed man of God was to the Jew the consummation 
of life. To be the enlightened one, to look with un- 
faltering eye on the light of life, seemed to the Hindu 
eternal peace. The Buddha is no rival of the Christ, 
but when we once know his life we are constrained 
to say that the words of Jesus concerning John the 
Baptist in his relation to the prophets of Israel is 
true of this man in his relation to the other Masters 
of Humanity. " Of all that are born of women 
there hath not arisen a greater" than Gautama, Saky- 
amouni, Buddha. 



106 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Fancy has been busy here as elsewhere in weav- 
ing a coat of many colors for the infancy of this 
mighty man, but through the legendary mist we 
seem to see a simple-minded, pure, earnest boy grow- 
ing up amidst the luxury and frivolity and flattery 
of an Oriental court, the wonder of his teachers, 
a mystery to the good king, his father, who, like the 
father of a greater one, sought him and sorrowed 
because he found him not amongst the ambitious of 
his kinsfolk and acquaintance, and wist not that 
the earnest lad was about his father's business. 

The life moves on amid Oriental scenery. Before 
the young prince there come at the father's com- 
mand all the beauty of the land ; they pass by un- 
noticed till at last that life, which the Buddha after- 
wards said, with such a deep meaning, that he had 
known and loved in many a previous existence, 
stands before him ; then the sleeping heart awakes 
with a bound, and the dreamy prince stands forth 
a man after his father's own heart, and gladly enters 
the lists to tame the unbroken steed, to throw the 
unconquered wrestler, to draw the unbending bow, 
that he may win the princess who has waked him 
to the joy of life. 

For a moment the father's cup is full ; no fault 
of his if the son do not remain to the end lapped in 
luxury, soothed with soft music, breathing sweet 
perfumes. From the harem the noiseless slaves 
carry the sick girl who may not cry out, on pain of 
death, lest the prince learn that life has sorrow ; 
from the bush the fading rose leaf is picked in the 
early morning, lest the waking prince see that decay 



BUDDHISM. 107 

is the end of beauty ; golden gates shut in the 
palace, lest the prince see that there is disease and 
death outside. But no slave can stop the wind which 
bloweth where it listeth, and it speaks to the kingly 
soul of other lands from whence it blows. The 
Western gates cannot prevent the sun's rays from 
pointing to other lands to which it stoops. Are all 
men happy there as is the prince with his gentle 
bride ? Are all men happy just outside the gates ? 
The prince will see. 

The troubled father commands that when the 
prince goes through the town all shall seem bright 
and fair. So it is. But when the prince, happy at 
the sight of all the simple joy of his people, would 
turn back again to his own delights, then 

when midway in the road, 
Slow tottering from the hovel where he hid, 
Crept forth a wretch in rags, haggard and foul. 
An old, old man, whose shriveled skin, snn-tanned, 
Clung like a beast's hide to his fleshless hones. 
Bent was his hack with load of many days ! 
His eyepits red with rust of ancient tears. 
His dim orbs blear with rheum, his toothless jaws 
Wagging with palsy and the fright to see 
So many and such joy. One skinny hand 
Clutched a worn staff to prop his quavering limbs, 
And one was pressed upon the ridge of ribs. 
Whence came in gasps the heavy painful breath. 
** Alms," moaned he, "give good people ! for I die 
To-morrow or the next day ! ' ' then the cough 
Choked him, but still he stretched his palm, and stood 
Blinking and groaning 'mid his spasms, " Alms ! " 
Then those around had wrenched his feeble feet 
Aside, and thrust him from the road again. 
Saying, " The Prince ! dost see ? get to thy lair ! " 
But that Siddartha cried, " Let be ! let be I 



108 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Chaiina ! what thing is this that seems a man, 

Yet surely only seems, being so bowed, 

So miserable, so horrible, so sad ? 

Are men born sometimes thus ? What meaneth he 

Moaning ' to-morrow or next day I die ? ' 

Finds he no food that so his bones jut forth ? 

What woe hath happened to this piteous one ? " 

Then answer made the charioteer, " Sweet Prince I 

This is no other than an aged man. 

Some fourscore years ago his back was straight, 

His eye bright, and his body goodly ; now 

The thievish years have sucked his sap away. 

Pillaged his strength, and filched his will and wit ; 

His lamp has lost its oil, the wick burns black ; 

What life he keeps is one poor lingering spark 

Which flickers for the finish : such is age ; 

Why should your Highness heed ? " Then spake the Prince, 
* * But shall this come to others, or to all. 

Or is it rare that one should be as he ? " 
**Most noble," answered Channa, '' even as he 

Will all these grow if they shall live so long." 
**But," quoth the Prince, "if I shall live as long, 

Shall I be thus ; and if Yasodhara 

Live fourscore years, is this old age for her, 

Jalini, little Hasta, Gautami, 

And Gunga, and the others ? " "Yea, great Sir! " 

The charioteer replied. Then spake the Prince : 
* ' Turn back, and drive me to my house again ! 

I have seen that I did not think to see." 

This then was what life might be. Again they go 
forth and see what must be the end of every life. 
What is the end of the lives of the sorrowful, asks 
the Prince. 

"They die" 

"Die?" 

' ' Yea, at the last comes death, 
In whatsoever way, whatever hour. 
Some few grow old, most suffer and fall sick, 



BUDDHISM. 109 

But all must die — behold where comes the dead ! " 

Then did Siddartha raise his eyes, and see 

Fast pacing towards the river bank a band 

Of wailing people, foremost one who swung 

An earthen bowl with lighted coals, behind 

The kinsmen shorn, with mourning marks, ungirt 

Crying aloud, ' ' O Rama, Rama, hear ! 

Call upon Rama brothers ; ' ' next the bier, 

Knit of four poles with bamboos interlaced, 

Whereon lay stark and stiff, with feet foremost, lean, 

Chapfallen, sightless, hollow-flanked a-grin. 

Sprinkled with red and yellow dust the Dead. 

Then spake the Prince : — 

** Is this the end which comes to all who live ? ' 
** This is the end that comes 
To all, ' ' quoth Channa. 

"The high, the low, the good, the bad, must die, 
And then, 't is taught, begin anew and live 
Somewhere, somehow, — who knows ? — and so again 
The pangs, the parting and the lighted pile : — 
Such is man's round." 

Then the Prince : — 

The vail is rent 
Which blinded me ! I am as all these men 
Who cry upon the Gods and are not heard 
Or are not heeded — yet there must be aid ! 
For them and me and all there must be help ! 
Perchance the gods have need of help themselves 
Being so feeble that when sad lips cry 
They cannot save ! I would not let one cry 
Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm 
Would make a world and keep it miserable. 
Since, if all-powerful, he leaves it so 
He is not good, and if not powerful, 
He is not God ? — Channa ! lead home again ! 
It is enough ! Mine eyes have seen enough ! i 

1 The Light of Asia, Book Third. 



110 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

I have quoted at great length from " The Light 
of Asia," which has told the story of Buddha's life 
with great beauty and power, but I do not see how 
the crisis of his life could be better described than in 
the words of one of his disciples who has said, with 
the brief simplicity of our own Evangelists, " He was 
seized with a great compassion for this great multi- 
tude plunged in uncertainty." 

That night the sun left him in his princely state, 
next morning it rose on him far from home, dressed 
in the yellow robe of the mendicant, holding the 
beggar's bowl for alms, seeking, in the only way he 
knew, the ^' Kingdom of God and his Righteous- 
ness." Of only One can it be said with a deeper 
meaning by his disciples, " Though he were rich yet 
for our sakes he became poor." 

The force of any character is to be measured by 
the amount of hostile power in the conditions of his 
life which he overcomes. We are so apt to dwell 
upon the disadvantages and hindrances of poverty, 
that we are in danger of overlooking the much 
greater dangers of luxury. But, of course, it is a 
greater proof of power to cast aside the luxury of 
the court and adopt a life of hardship than to begin 
with hardship and end with fame, for the tendency 
of adversity is to brace a healthy character, but each 
year of luxury relaxes the sinews of the soul. It 
was the greater test to which Buddha was subjected, 
and the " Great Renunciation " is to the Buddhist 
what the Cross is to the Christian. 

Indeed, it was inevitable that the reformation of 
Brahmanism should begin with a renunciation, for 



BUDDHISM. Ill 

in the nature of things it was impossible that God 
should choose, in India, as in Judea, '' the foolish 
things of the world." The caste system had so 
permeated life that no peasant would have been heard 
had he ventured to preach. The reformation must 
begin by the calling of the '''Mighty and the Nohle^ 

Out of the legends that cluster thick about Gau- 
tama life we learn that for years after the Great Re- 
nunciation the man lived in the jungle, and in the 
caves of the mountains, seeking through the ascetic 
miseries of the reputed holy men, the Rishis, and 
the Yogin, to attain to peace. But it was in vain, 
and he returned again to the habitations of men 
seeking to learn the truth. And it came to him, as 
it has always come to man, not as the result of a log- 
ical process of thought, not as the immediate reward 
of any definite act, but as a ^' peace that passeth all 
understanding," it finally filled his heart and mind. 

It was at Gaya, the legend says, sitting under the 
Bo tree, after long meditation, that deliverance came. 
As he sat silent, there rolled over his soul the suc- 
cessive waves of light. First he saw as from a 
mountain peak the successive stages of lives through 
which he had past, then came the insight into all 
that was to come, then he saw the secret of sorrow 
and the way of escape, where man 

g-lides — 
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy, 
Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest, 
That change which never changes. 

The victory had been won, the seeker after truth 
had become enlightened. He was Buddha. 



112 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

There is a popular impression that Buddha be- 
ginning de novo formulated an elaborate system of 
philosophy. There could be no greater mistake. 
Buddha was above all things a practical man ; for 
speculation as such he had no interest. The problem 
of his life was how to live. The Brahmans had, as 
we have already seen, an elaborate system of phi- 
losophy, but together with it went a complicated 
system of ritual by v/hich the gods were to be in- 
fluenced. Now when Sakyamouni came to ponder 
over the problem of life, he perceived that if the 
philosophy of the Upanishads was true there was no 
need of the ritual. Nay, more, if it was true, it was 
true for the gods as well as for men. So Buddha 
did not denj^ the existence of the gods, he simply ig- 
nored them. He was not an atheist but an agnostic. 

We have already spoken of the two schools of Brah- 
manic philosophy, — the Sankhya and the Vedanta. 
At the time of Buddha's Great Renunciation, they 
differed in little save in name. Buddha stood at the 
meeting of these two streams of thought. From his 
day they have formed one river. The Materialism 
of the Sankhya school and the Pantheism of the 
Vedanta became at their junction the philosophy of 
Buddhism, what we may call an idealized material' 
ism. 

But the times were ripe for Buddhism, not only 
philosophically but also ecclesiastically. We have 
seen that the original scripture of the Indian Aryans 
was the Rig- Veda, and then that to this was added 
the Yagur and the Sama Vedas. The next step was 
to insert the Brahmanas in the canon, and then the 



BUDDHISM. 113 

Upanishads followed. But no sooner had the various 
schools of thought arisen than a philosophic litera- 
ture was produced, which began to have an inflaence 
upon the thinking portion of the community greater 
than that of the Vedas themselves. The consequence 
was that the adherents of one of the schools, probably 
the Mimansa, endeavored to have their Sutras, as 
these writings were called, inserted as a part of the 
canon, on the ground that they embodied the " tradi- 
tions of the fathers." Then began the great contro- 
versy concerning the Smriti and the Sutri, that is, 
tradition and revelation. It was like the discussion 
in Europe concerning the false decretals, and the re- 
sult in both cases was the same, a profound skepti- 
cism of the whole system founded on these traditions. 
At the height of this skeptical tide Buddha appeared. 
The life of Gautama after his attainment to 
Buddhahood differed in no respect from that of the 
other teachers of his time, that is, he went through- 
out the land preaching the good news to those who 
had " ears to hear," and so, little by little, gathering 
about him a company of disciples. Daring the rainy 
season he rested in some quiet village ; at the end 
of that season he spoke to the multitudes that 
flocked to hear him when it was known that he was 
in the neighborhood. Biahmans came with their 
disciples and tried to put him to silence, but could 
not withstand the wisdom and power with which he 
spake. Poor wretched outcasts crept to his side and 
learned how the thirst of lust might be quenched. 
The " great multitude plunged in uncertainty " 
found in him one who could teach them the true 
way of escape. 



114 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

The method of his teaching was probably entirely 
unconventional, but his disciples soon formulated his 
sayings into a definite system of logical exactness. 
It consisted first of the " Four Noble Truths," which 
are: 1. The existence of pain. 2. The cause of 
pain. 3. The " Way " to the cessation of pain ; 4. 
and then the end of all. Nirvana. To appreciate the 
power of this teaching it is necessary to examine 
each of these truths in turn. 

1. " The existence of pain." That need not de- 
tain us long. It is a fact which is as familiar to us 
as to the Buddha ; it is one of the great cords that 
bind all living creatures together. I shall have some- 
thing to say later of this as a starting-point of reli- 
gion or philosophy ; at present I merely wish to call 
attention to the fact. There is one thing to be re- 
membered, however, before we pass on, and that is, 
that the existence of pain is much more apparent in 
the East than in the West. We hide our trouble 
and go through life as if we were happy whether we 
are or not. The Oriental at best only maintains 
a dignified silence. We hide our wounds, and house 
the sick, and cover the dead. In the East the leper 
lies on the bridge with his decaying limbs exposed 
to the gaze of every passer-by. The blind grope 
their way from house to house. The dead with un- 
covered face are carried along the highway on which 
the bride is being borne to the bridegroom's house. 

The evidences of suffering are on every hand. So 
we can see why Buddha should have begun with sor- 
row. On the other hand, when we remember that 
the continual sight of suffering tends to deaden the 



BUDDHISM. 115 

sensibilities, we shall have a deeper appreciation of 
the loving heart of the noble prince whose only 
thought was of saving of the world from woe. 
'' This, O monks, is the sacred truth of suffering : 
Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness is 
suffering, death is suffering, to be united with the 
unloved is suffering, to be separated from the loved 
is suffering, not to obtain what one desires is suffer- 
ing, in short the fivefold clinging to the earthly is 
suffering." ^ Nor was this all : to the Hindu, death 
and birth were alike in this, that both led only to 
sorrow : for birth leads to disease, and disease to de- 
cay, and decay to death, and death again to re-birth. 
To deliver man then from sorrow was to deliver him 
from the endless chain of existence. 

2. What is the cause of sorrow ? The answer to 
that question was the great discovery of the Buddha. 
It is Desire, more literally Thirst. 

The thirst of thoughtless man grows like a creeper. He 
runs from life to life like a monkey seeking fruit in the 
forest. 

Whomsoever this fierce thirst overcomes, full of poison 
in this world, his sufferings increase like the abounding 
Birana grass. 

He who overcomes this fierce thirst, difficult to be over- 
come in this world, sufferings fall off from him like water- 
drops from a lotus leaf.^ 

Such was life, — a snare and a delusion. " Vanity 
of vanities " was not, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, 

1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha (Eng. trans.), 211. 

2 Dhammapada, chap. xxiv. Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. 



116 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

a note which, sounding the discord of life, only 
serves to emphasize the eternal harmony of life ; it 
was the very theme of Buddhism. Man clutched at 
riches, and seized care ; he pampered the senses, and 
bred disease ; he sought for knowledge, and engen- 
dered doubt ; reaching forth with his affections to 
embrace some life, it was snatched away. As death 
drew near, wishing ardently for a new life which 
would satisfy the unsatisfied cravings of this life, he 
bound himself still tighter to the fast revolving 
wheel of existence ; the swifter its course the more 
desperately he clings to the engine of his destruc- 
tion. So life is one endless horror, anguish, and de- 
spair ! But how is this thirst to be quenched ? In 
the first place the cause of the thirst must be dis- 
covered. 

It would seem that the fear of making this plain 
to the world caused the Buddha to hesitate before 
proclaiming the Great Deliverance to men, and of 
that scheme no part seemed to him so difficult to 
make men understand as this cause of thirst. It is 
no wonder, for it will be difficult to say exactly what 
it means ; at the same time we may well believe that 
the words had a meaning to the Hindu which we 
are unable to grasp. And another thing is to be 
borne in mind and that is, tha.t often they did not 
care, in their dreamy mysticism, to attach any very 
definite meaning to the terms of a proposition if the 
general tenor of it commended itself to their feeling. 
If we look for a moment at the result of thirst we 
shall be able to see why, if that were extinguished, 
both its cause and effect ceased. The result of 



BUDDHISM. 117 

thirst is clinging to existence ; the result of clinging 
is hirth^ from birth come old age^ pain^ death, and, 
if thirst still continues, re-birth. The constant meta- 
phor which explained this was the flame of a candle. 
Man's life is the flame. As the fuel is consumed, 
the flame flickers to its extinction, but if a breath of 
wind bloios upon it it will attach itself to new fuel. 
Now the wind which blows man's life is desire, 
thirst, lust. So if thirst can be extinguished the 
effects which are so disastrous will fail. Now look 
backward. Thirst arises from sensation, sensation 
results from contact between the senses and objects ; 
the cause of this sensible contact, of course, is the 
senses. So far all is clear enough ; but the senses 
result from na7ne and hodily form (that is, I sup- 
pose, sentient being, which is true, but only states 
the cause in another denomination of the effect). 
Name and form result from consciousness (here I 
think we have a trace of the Sankhya belief in the 
existence of innumerable individual souls as opposed 
to the Vedanta belief in the One Soul, Atman). In- 
dividual consciousness is the result of the Skandhas, 
and the Skandhas are themselves the result of Igno- 
rance. This last is the most obscure point of all, 
but very likely it points to the Vedanta belief in 
Maya, or the illusion which existed along with Brah- 
ma, and from which all that is seen is made, this 
being often spoken of as Ignorance. So if we do 
not scrutinize the terms too closely we shall be able 
to see how the destruction of this thirst will lead, by 
many steps, to the cessation of being and conse- 
quently of suffering. Thirst is the key-stone of the 



118 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Buddhist doctrine ; remove that and the whole arch 
falls to the ground. Buddha desired nothing less ; 
he was a nihilist. But his nihilism looked to some- 
thing more than destruction ; that was only a means 
to an end, which was the building of a better life on 
the ruins of the old. 

These things, then, ignorance, consciousness, etc., 
are the fetters which bind the soul to life. They 
could have no power over man were it not that he 
lusts after them. 

It is not ignorance that is to be dreaded, it is the 
lust of ignorance, the desire for consciousness, etc., 
which causes the misery of life. Man, therefore, 
has his fate in his own hands ; he must be his own 
savior. " Quench this thirst and sorrow will fall off 
like water-drops from a lotus leaf." 

3. But how is it to be quenched ? The answer is 
by entering upon the noble path, — the way of sal- 
vation w^hich the Buddha came to preach. 

This path is eightfold ; namely, right views, right 
aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right liveli- 
hood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right con- 
templation.^ 

Again the noble path is divided into four stages, 
each of which has its own appropriate blessing. The 
unconverted man is he who has not begun to walk 
the noble path ; he is the slave of delusion. But he 
who has been converted is gradually freed from the 
three fetters, namely, the delusion of self, doubt con- 
cerning the Buddha, and belief in the efficacy of rites 

^ Sacred Boohs of the East, vol. xi. 



BUDDHISM. 119 

and ceremonies. Freedom from these fetters is the 
fruit of the first stage. 

The second stage is reached by those who, freed 
from the fetters, have reduced sensuality^ ill-ivill^ 
and foolishness. Such will return to this earth but 
once after death. 

The third stage is reached by those who have ut- 
terly destroyed sensuality and ill-will. Free from 
all carnal affections and every evil thought they will 
return to the earth no more. 

The last stage, only the worthy — the Arahats — 
attain to. These are they who have quenched all 
desire for life, all pride, all self-righteousness, all ig- 
norance. Free from all delusion and sin, they see 
things only as they are. Having quenched all evil 
desire they are filled with pity and love for others. 

To be in that state is to reach Nirvana.^ 

To appreciate the value of this scheme of salva- 
tion it is necessary to bear in mind what it replaced. 

At the time of Buddha there were but two ways 
of escape, — the one through sensuality, from which 
the Buddha shrunk as leading only to greater mis- 
ery ; and the path of asceticism, which the Buddha 
saw was impotent to bring peace to the soul. 

There are two extremes, O Bhikkhus, which the man 
who has given up the world ought not to follow : the ha- 
bitual practice, on the one hand, of those things whose 
attraction depends upon the passions, and especially of 
sensuality, — a low and pagan way of seeking satisfac- 

^ Contemporary Beview, January, 1877, Buddhism, by Rhys Da- 
vids. 



120 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

tion unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly 
minded ; and the habitual practice, on the other hand, 
of asceticism, — which is painful, unworthy, and unprofit- 
able. There is a middle path, O Bhikkhus, ... a path 
which opens the eyes and bestows understanding, which 
leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full en- 
lightenment ; to Nirvana ! ^ 

This middle path is the way already described. 

Now there can be no doubt that this was a verita- 
ble discovery of the great moral law that peace can 
be obtained only through righteousness. But right- 
eousness means right relation, and there was no God 
with whom man was to be brought into right rela- 
tion, — for while, as we have said before, Buddha 
did not deny the existence of the gods, he ignored 
them ; they might exist, but in that case they needed 
to enter on the noble path as much as men. So the 
only righteousness was that between man and mail 
and the man with himself, — that is, a sort of internal 
harmony. Another discovery, that the cause of all 
the misery of life is selfishness, was the work of 
Buddha. For when we look at it closely we see that 
the thirst which he so much deprecated was what 
we call selfishness. But, having no god, he could 
have no place for redemption in his scheme of sal- 
vation ! All that he could promise was the extinc- 
tion of the fires of passion. 

Now wherein lay the power of this gospel? for 
that it has been a power in the history of the human 
race no one can deny. Rising out of the ruins of 
Brahmanism it overspread India and Ceylon. It 

^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. 



BUDDHISM. 121 

passed into Nepaiil, and from thence, having under- 
gone some modification, it developed a missionary- 
spirit which led to triumphs in Thibet, China, Corea, 
and Japan. From Ceylon it passed to Burmah and 
Siam. Though it has been driven from India proper, 
being found only in Ceylon and Nepaul, yet modern 
Hinduism is a mixture of Buddhism and Brahman- 
ism, while Janism.^ the religion of the Sikhs, is the 
result of a deliberate attempt to harmonize the two ; 
so that while Buddhism has passed from India as 
Christianity did from Palestine, yet its influence is 
felt there stiU. 

But its missionary spirit is not the most remark- 
able thing about it, still less will it account for its 
triumphs ; for while zeal is a necessary element in 
missionary work, the important thing is alwaj^s the 
cause of the zeal. 

It has been supposed that it was the pure mo- 
rality of Buddhism which kindled the enthusiasm of 
preacher and hearer, and undoubtedly there is much 
truth in that. The morality of Buddhism is so in- 
comparably higher than anything that had preceded 
it in the East that it must have carried in itself the 
power of drawing sinful souls. Yet when we con- 
sider what human nature is, we shall feel convinced 
that what the human race wants is not goodness^ but 
happiness. As with the child, so with the race ; it re- 
quires a long course of education before it can identify 
happiness with goodness. The time does come when 
men can turn away from apparent happiness with the 
absolute certainty that eternal happiness is found 
only by those who find their satisfaction in drinking 



122 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

at the fountain of goodness. Now when we remem- 
ber that eighteen centuries of Christianity have not 
sufficed to convince all men who have come under 
its influence of this truth, and are told that Hindus, 
Singhalese, Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese welcomed 
Buddhism because of its pure morality, we may well 
be skeptical ! 

Buddha, then, must have had some good news, some 
gospel. What was it ? 

There are three ways in which the attainment of 
happiness may be presented to men. The first is the 
heathen way. " Do something that your god likes, 
sacrifice a bullock or a goat, or, better still, your first- 
born child, and he will pay you." The second is the 
Buddhist. " Walk in the Noble Path of virtue, and 
you will earn happiness," as the reward. The third 
is the Christian. " The free gift of God is eternal 
life in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

The first is perfectly arbitrary ; there is no neces- 
sary connection between the offering of a beast and 
the divine favor. It may be bought at a fixed price. 
Buddhism repudiated that, and said there is a neces- 
sary connection between righteousness and happiness. 
Do right and you will earn it. It was an immense 
advance on heathenism. It was a veritable discovery 
of the eternal law. But there is something higher 
still, and that is the offering to every soul eternal 
life, that is the awakening of the soul to the con- 
scious realization of its life being hidden with Christ 
in God, which will m^anifest itself in righteousness. 
Freedom from sin, peace with God, and joy in the 
Spirit of Holiness. 



BUDDHISM. 123 

The success of Buddhism may in part be ac- 
counted for by its missionary zeal, and by its method 
of attaining happiness which appealed to a higher in- 
stinct of the human race. But what was the happi- 
ness it proposed ? The happiness of heathenism was 
intelligible enough. The god will not destroy your 
cattle with hailstones. When you die he will save 
you from torment. 

The happiness of the Christian is appreciable ; it 
is the gaining of a new spirit, the spirit of power, 
the spirit of joy, and the spirit of peace. 

Now what was the happiness of Buddhism? It 
was Nirvana. What that was we may be able to say 
later. This much we can say, that it was deliverance 
from existence in any such form as w^e know it now. 
Sad as it may seem, that was the cause of the triumph 
of Buddhism. The pessimism of the East had per- 
meated every crevice of life, until men had lost in- 
terest in living. It has been well said that no more 
horrible message could be imagined by the Orien- 
tal than that life is everlasting. The causes of this 
pessimism it is impossible here to discuss. Un- 
doubtedly it is partly physical. A man whose life 
is hardly kept from ebbing away by a handful of 
rice can feel no thrill in simply living, as did the 
strong limbed Greek ! A social system which killed 
all hope for the individual as well as for the family 
made long life — that glory of the Hebrew — a hor- 
ror to the Hindu. A philosophy which restrained 
the desire to die by the fear of a re-birth after death 
made men " rather bear the ills they had than fly to 
others w^hich they knew not of." These were some, 



124 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

if not all, of the causes of a pessimism that so col- 
ored all life, that escape from it into an inexperi- 
enced and yet still in some dull way hoped for peace 
came to them as a veritable gospel, — a good news. 

Yet it was not annihilation that Buddha promised 
his disciples, at least not immediately upon death — 
if ever. Why he should not have done so is one of 
those inconsistencies which are the glory of a truly 
religious soul. Why had he who had cut himself 
loose from the popular theology, who had risen to 
the knowledge of the power of the law of righteous- 
ness, why did not he go a step further and discard 
the belief in the transmigration of souls, and say 
boldly, " The end of life is annihilation ? " The an- 
swer is twofold : First, there was his firm conviction 
that the law of right was eternal ; and then there 
was the Brahmanic philosophy in which he had been 
trained. A man cannot entirely rid himself of his 
past any more than he can outstrip his own shadow, 
and Buddha was no exception to the rule. 

The legend of Buddha declares that it was the 
sight of suffering which caused Buddha to renounce 
the pleasures of life and begin the life of a preacher 
of salvation to a sorrowful world. But it has been 
well said that we may be sure that this effect was 
caused not by that sight alone, but by a painful sight 
on a mind already saddened by the collapse of some 
ideal. It was the collapse of the popular philosophy 
which led Buddha and his first disciples to enter 
upon the " Noble Path. " 

There are three points in that philosophy which 
we must consider if we would understand the teach- 
ing of Buddha. 



BUDDHISM. 125 

The first is what is called the doctrine of the 
'' Skandhas " or Groups. Both schools of philoso- 
phy, that is the Sankhya and the Vedanta, began 
with the doctrine of the Skandhas, that is to say, 
they both denied the proper individuality of man. 
According to the Sankhya school the individuality of 
man was due to the union of an eternally preexistent 
independent soul with matter,^ in which term they 
included material qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, 
the natural tendencies or disposition of the life and 
thought, or reason. Now from the junction of these 
groups with the preexistent soul was produced the 
individuality, just as by the mixture of two or more 
chemical elements is produced a gas which did not 
reside in either of them alone. When it is added 
that the soul was dependent for " consciousness " ^ 
upon this incarnation, we shall see that the Sankhya 
doctrine was pure materialism. 

But the Indian mind has always shrunk from 
materialism, because it leads to Atheism, and it 
is saturated with Theism. Nevertheless, there were 
some who boldly announced the conclusion to which 
their philosophy led, and declared that on the dis- 
solution of the Skandhas, that is at death, the soul 
ceased to be; that the result of death is annihila- 
tion.^ 

The Vedanta doctrine differed from the foregoing 
in its denial of the separate existence of individual 
souls, and consequently in its rejection of the doc- 

1 Earth's Religions of India (Eng. trans.), p. 70. 

2 See Indian Wisdom^ p. 96. 

^ See Oldenburg's Life of Buddha (Eng. trans.), p. 273, note. 



126 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

trine of the necessity of the Skandhas for conscious- 
ness. Both agreed that on the dissolution of the 
Skandhas the soul was set free, but the Vedanta 
taught that it returned to the source of all life, the 
one soul, the Atman of the universe. 

What now was Buddha's relation to this doctrine ? 
There is no doubt that he was most in sympathy 
with the extreme Sankhya teaching. But he dif- 
fered from it in two respects : in the first place he 
did not believe in preexistent eternal souls ; he 
believed that the soul is the result of the junction 
of the Skandhas. He subdivided them till they in- 
cluded every variety of sensation and imagination. 
He did not go back of this doctrine. He accepted 
and developed it A favorite illustration was this : 
You see something which you call a chariot. It con- 
sists of body, and wheels, and a pole. Divide them, 
take them all apart, you have not destroyed the 
elements, but you have destroyed the chariot} In 
other words, the chariot was only a term given 
to express the relation of certain things to each 
other ; it is a fiction ; so is the soul. It has no ex- 
istence apart from the Skandhas. So it was that 
the Buddha taught that the first of all delusions 
from which man must be delivered was the delusion 
of self. The vain imagination that he had any 
proper individuality apart from the conjunction of 
the Skandhas. This was what caused all the misery 
of life. The attempt to gain something from life that 
should be the possession of an individuality which 
had no real existence was as senseless as if a man 
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha^ p. 256. 



BUDDHISM. 127 

were to deny himself the necessaries of life that he 
may heap up riches for a child that is already dead. 
Yet this is what Buddha saw both schools of philoso- 
phy were encouraging men to do. It was their fail- 
ure to bring peace that led to the Buddhist doctrine 
of the Skandhas. 

So far, the doctrine of Buddha was only an am- 
plification of the Sankhya school of philosophy, but 
here it seems to have been deflected from its logical 
path by the teaching of the Vedanta school. We 
have already seen that the Vedanta school accepted 
the doctrine of the Skandhas in a modified form : 
teaching, however, that the soul on the dissolution 
of the Skandhas was re-absorbed in the divine es- 
sence, but not immediately on death. Not until 
purified from all taint of corruption by passing 
through many stages of transmigration was the soul 
capable of that re-absorption which would end its 
miseries. 

It was at this point that Buddha parted company 
with the Sankhya school, and followed the teachings 
of the Vedanta. He preached with a power never 
before equaled the doctrine of the transmigration 
of souls. 

Now here is the puzzle : Why did he, who had 
rejected the dogma of a Supreme Being, not continue 
with the materialistic Sankhya school, and say the 
misery of the soul ends with death which dissolves 
the Skandhas ? Why did he suddenly turn to the 
idealistic Vedantism and accept the doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls ? I believe it was because 
his soul hungered and thirsted after righteousness. 



128 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

The soul miglit be the result of the Skandhas, hut if 
death ended all, then there was no answer to the 
awful moral problem of life ; and so while we cannot 
affirm that Buddha believed in the immortality of 
the soul, yet he detained the soul, as it were, between 
heaven and earth, and insisted that it should give 
some answer to the moral problem of suffering. 

The answer to that problem, and at the same time 
an incentive to virtue, Buddha found in the doctrine 
of Kamma. At first sight it would seem as if there 
were no distinction between the Brahmanic doctrine 
of the transmigration of souls and the Buddhist 
teaching of Kamma ; the difference, however, is that 
Kamma was a highly developed form of the Brah- 
manic doctrine. The Brahmans taught, " An evil 
life will be punished by re-birth into a lower form 
of existence. A good life will be rewarded by a 
better life, and this will continue until the soul is 
sufficiently pure to be re-absorbed into Brahma." 
Now this doctrine of re-absorption in some sense 
underlay all Oriental teaching, — the object of such 
absorption being to destroy the individuality. The 
word Kamma, which means, literally, " act," had been 
used by the Brahmans to designate the ritual which 
was an " act " performed not only for men, but also 
for the gods. Upon this " act " gods and men were 
alike dependent. This prepared the way for Bud- 
dha; when he asked himself upon what gods and 
men were alike dependent, he answered that it could 
not be the senseless ceremonies, it must be some 
moral act. So with Buddha the "act," or Kamma 



BUDDHISM. 129 

of life, was that which resulted from the thirst for 
existence. Thus : here is a child ; it has done in 
this life neither good nor bad, yet it has begun life 
deformed in body, or, still worse, in mind ; or, even 
worse still, it came into this world with an almost 
irresistible tendency to lust or deeds of violence. 
How came it to be so ? Calvinism has its answer. 
It is the manifestation of the divine wrath against 
sinful flesh. Modern science has its answer. It is 
the result of heredity. Buddha said it was Kamma. 
That is, when that life which is now in the child 
came to die in a previous life it clung to some evil, 
and the result of the clinging is the Kamma, or act, 
which we see now. The soul is like a flame which 
is dependent for its existence upon the fuel which 
it consumes ; if it did not attach itself to new fuel it 
would not revive.^ The child has not inherited a 
curse pronounced on the race ; the child has not in- 
herited the evil tendencies of its ancestors ; the child 
has inherited its own evil tendencies ; the child is its 
own souVs parent ! ^ 

It was this belief which prevented Buddha from 
accepting the materialistic theory of the annihilation 
of the soul at death, which we should have supposed 
must follow, naturally, from the belief that the soul 
is the result of the Skandhas. '' When they dissolve 
the soul must cease to be," we would say, but not 
so Buddha ; he said, '' No, the soul is the result of 
the Skandhas it is true, but it has within itself the 
power of forming new Skandhas," which will remain 

1 Oldenburg-'s Life of Buddha, p. 262. 

2 Contemporary Review^ January, 1877. 

9 



130 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

when the old have dissolved. But the thing that 
revived on the death of the old life, and created the 
identity between the two lives, was not self-conscious- 
ness, nor will, nor affection, but simply Kamma, the 
net result of the previous life. The suffering man 
and the sinner had no right to complain ; they were 
simply reaping what they had sown. 

According to Buddha every life was the slave of 
Kamma. If there were gods they were not free. 
He looked back over the long vista of life, and he 
saw the reckless sowing of tares ; he looked about 
him, and he saw the harvest being gathered with 
tears. He looked into the future, and he saw the un- 
ending road that stretched itself before life. Birth, 
and death, and birth again, thirsting desire never 
quenched, bright hopes disappointed, — health sink- 
ing into disease, agony leading to death, and death 
to life, and so on forever, and ever, and ever. He 
looked above him, and heard of a Divine Essence 
that waited in dumb silence to absorb life, — and 
he turned in righteous indignation from such a God. 
He saw men crowd the temples, and he knew that 
like shipwrecked sailors they were drinking the salt 
water which could only serve to increase the mad- 
ness of their thirst. 

Then in the midst of that silent agony he heard 
the voice which had spoken to the Hebrew Psalmist, 
saying, " Keep innocency, and take heed unto the 
thing that is right, for that will bring a man peace 
at the last." So it was that he begun to preach his 
gospel, promising to all who entered on the Noble 
Path that they should be 



BUDDHISM. 131 

Released from all the skandhas of the flesh : 
Broken from ties — from Upadanas — saved 
From whirling on the wheel ; aroused and sane 
As is a man wakened from hateful dreams, 
Until, greater than kings, than gods more glad ! 
The aching craze to live ends, and life glides — 
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy, 
Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest, 
That change which never changes, i 

We can see then why the Buddha was hailed as a 
deliverer. It was because he promised freedom 
from that law of Kamma to which every Oriental be- 
lieved himself to be subject. To the Western mind 
it is difficult to reach the point where it can appreci- 
ate the doctrines of the Skandhas and Kamma, but 
we must remember that with the Oriental they were 
ultimate facts of consciousness as truly as our coc/ito 
ergo sum. But when we reach this point the Noble 
Path stretches before as a straight road which we 
may follow to the end. 

We have seen that the " path " was twelvefold, — 
eight right things and four stages ; we have seen 
that the objective of the path was the destruction of 
thirst, but we have not found the secret of the path, 
that which gave force to it. 

It was that which has given life to every religion 
since the world began ; it was faith. The theory of 
Buddhism was that every man was to be his own 
savior, but it was impossible that this could be ; and 
it was soon found that while the " poor " would fol- 
low a teacher, they could not apply a theory of sal- 
vation to their souls ; and so we find that during the 
^ The Light of Asia^ Book the Sixth. 



132 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

lifetime of the Buddha a difficulty arose regarding 
the state of the faithful departed, and the Buddha 
answered : "- Now there is nothing strange in this that 
a human being should die, but as each one does so you 
should come to the Buddha and inquire about them 
in this manner, that is wearisome to the Buddha. I 
will therefore teach you a way of truth, called the 
mirror of truth, which if an elect disciple possess he 
may himself predict of himself, 'Hell is destroyed 
for me, and re-birth as an animal, or a ghost, or in 
any other place of woe. I am converted, I am no 
longer liable to be re-born in a state of suffering, and 
am assured of final salvation.' " 

'' What, then, Ananda, is this mirror of truth ? It 
is the consciousness that the elect disciple is in this 
world possessed of faith in the Buddha, believing 
the blessed one to be the holy one, the fully-enlight- 
ened one, wise, upright, happy, world-knowing, su- 
preme, the bridler of men's wayward hearts, the 
teacher of gods and men, the blessed Buddha." ^ To 
this is added faith in the truth proclaimed by 
Buddha, and faith in the Church as the keeper of 
the truth. 

This is as much as was expected of the great body 
of Buddhists, and soon took the place of the weightier 
matters of the law. The daily confession of faith is 
the great safeguard of the faithful. " I take my 
refuge in Buddha ; I take refuge in the Law." 

But for those who were able to bear it there was 

^ The Book of the Great Decease, chap, ii., Sacred Books of the 
East, vol. xi. 



BUDDHISM. 133 

the more excellent way of moral exertion. But when 
we look into that we find that it too was modified to 
answer the needs of an indolent people. The eight 
right things are reduced to one, that is, right con- 
templation. Thus we read in the " Book of the Great 
Decease : " " Great is the fruit, great the advantage 
of earnest contemplation when set round with up- 
right conduct. Great is the fruit, great the advan- 
tage of intellect when set round with earnest con- 
templation. The mind set round with intellioence is 
freed from the great evils, that is to say, from sen- 
suality, from individuality, from delusion, and from 
ignorance." ^ Now in this passage we see that right 
conduct is dependent upon intelligence, and intelli- 
gence upon contemplation, but if we look at the pas- 
sage in the same book on '' Contemplation " we shall 
see that it ends in trance, and that intelligence is 
the power by which the mind prevents its excitation 
by sensible objects. 

Now the stages of deliverance, Ananda, are eight in 
number. Which are the eisrht ? 

o 

A man possessed with the idea of form sees forms ; this 
is the first stage of deliverance. 

Without the subjective idea of form, he sees forms ex- 
ternally ; this is the second stage of deliverance. 

With the thought it is well, he becomes intent upon 
what he sees ; this is the third stage of deliverance. 

By passing quite beyond all idea of form, by putting 
an end to all idea of resistance, by paying no attention 
to the idea of distinction, he, thinking it is all infinite 
space, reaches mentally and remains in the state of mind 

^ The Book of the Great Decease, chap, ii., Sacred Books of the 
East^ vol. xi. 



134 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

in which the idea of the infinity of space is the only idea 
that is present ; this is the fourth stage of deliverance. 

By passing quite beyond all idea of space being the in- 
finite basis, he, thinking it is all infinite reason, reaches 
mentally and remains in the state of mind to which the 
infinity of reason is alone present ; this is the fifth stage of 
deliverance. 

By passing quite beyond the mere consciousness of the 
infinity of reason, he, thinking nothing at all exists, 
reaches mentally and remains in the state of mind to 
which nothing at all is specially present ; this is the sixth 
stage of deliverance. 

By passing quite beyond all idea of nothingness he 
reaches mentally and remains in the state of mind to 
which neither idea nor the absence of ideas are specially 
present ; this is the seventh stage of deliverance. 

By passing quite beyond the state of ideas or the ab- 
sence of ideas he reaches mentally and remains in the 
state of mind in which both sensations and ideas have 
ceased to be ; this is the eighth stage of deliverance.^ 

We see, then, to what it all led ; it really was a 
return to the old Brahmanic theory of absorption 
through contemplation ; the difference being that the 
Brahman expected a union with the Atman as the 
result, while Buddha expected nothing but the ex- 
tinction of the fires of passion and destructive thirst. 
Before we attempt an answer to the question as to 
the meaning of Nirvana, which was to result from this 
extinction, let us run our eye over this plan of salva- 
tion again. 

First, then there was the fundamental dogma, 

1 The Book of the Great Decease, chap. ii. , Sacred Books of the 
East, vol. xi. 



BUDDHISM. 135 

Life is misery: (1), because of evident pain and sor- 
row ; and (2), because those things which are counted 
joys are delusions which end in sorrow. 

Secondly. There is properly speaking no such 
thing as individuality. That which we speak of as 
the individual soul is not an entity, but only a mode 
of existence of certain physical, mental, and moral 
Skandhas ; this, however, is not dissipated at the phys- 
ical death, which dissolves the Skandhas, because the 
Kamma, that which the life has done, remains and 
forms the individuality of the new life, is the heir of 
all its tendencies, and the inheritor of all its sorrows. 

Thirdly. There would be no Kamma, no '' doing " 
by any life, were it not that back of this present life 
there is the pressure of an irresistible tendency or 
predisposition which arose in some previous existence, 
and an accursed thirst which leads the soul to drink 
of that which only begets desire. Destroy this 
thirst, break the chain of this tendency, and you are 
free. 

Fourthly. This can be done only by entering on 
the Noble Path. The cause of desire is ignorance.^ 
" If," said the Buddha, " you coidd see things as they 
are you would desire nothing." Who would stretch 
forth his hand to pluck a fruit if he knew an adder 
would bite him ? There is an adder behind all fruit. 
He taught : — 

. . . how sorrow is 
Shadow to life, moving- where life doth moye ; 
Not to be laid aside until one lays 
Living aside, with all its changing states, 

1 This seems to conflict with the statement above that " Desire " 
is the cause of all ; but the Buddhist would answer. Ignorance is 
not the cause of desire, but the desire /(^r ignorance ! 



136 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Birth, growth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain, 
Being and doing. How that none strips off 
The sad delights and pleasant griefs who lacks 
Knowledge to know them snares, but he who knows 
Avidya — Delusion — sets those snares 
Loves life no longer but insures escape. ^ 

Destroy the thirst and you no longer forge new 
links in the chain of existence. Destroy the " ten- 
dencies," and you break those which have been forged 
in the past. How can this be done ? By doing 
right, and thinking right, and being right. Wrong 
doing, wrong thinking, wrong being produce, by a 
changeless law, an evil Kamma. As Jesus said, 
*' Whoso committeth sin is the servant of sin." The 
Buddha taught that he who would do no evil would 
have no Kamma to revive, but would glide peaceful 
and calm into the unending bliss of Nirvana, where 
no delusion deceives the weary soul, but where the 
aching craze to live ends, and life 

glides — 
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy, 
Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest, 
That change which never changes. 

What now is meant by Nirvana ? The word 
means literally '' not blown upon." It is a state of 
perfect calm. In it there is no more sorrow, for the 
soul is isolated, not in contact with any of the Skan- 
dhas. The evil power of Kamma broken, there is 
no more struggle. That which was capable of re- 
birth had died, there is no more fear. The penalty 
of all evil doing having been gathered home and 
patiently borne, there is no more sin. 

1 Light of Asia, Book the Sixth. 



BUDDHISM. 13T 

It is a state of enlightenment. Intelligence is not, 
as we should say, an act requiring observation and 
reflection. It is a wall of light which keeps the outer 
darkness from coming near the soul. " The mind 
set round with intelligence is freed from the great 
evils, that is to say, from sensuality, from individual- 
ity, from delusion, and from ignorance." Nirvana 
is a peace " which passeth all understanding." 

So far we can all go, but the question which con- 
cerns us most of all is this. Did Buddha preach 
annihilation ? Is that the goal of the Noble Path ? 
It would be most presumptuous in me to attempt to 
answer dogmatically a question which has divided the 
world of Oriental scholarship. I may, however, call 
your attention to one or two points in this discussion 
which may serve to guide our judgment in this 
most difficult path. 

And the first thing to notice is that entrance into 
the state of Nirvana is quite independent of the 
physical accident of death. If the Kamma is not 
exhausted Nirvfi-na is not attained at death, and when 
the state of supreme intelligence is reached Nirvana 
is entered before death. 

In the " Book of the Great Decease " the condi- 
tion of the last disciple whom the Buddha received 
into the order is thus described. 

So Subhadda, the mendicant, was received into the 
higher grade of the order under the Blesed One ; and 
from immediately after his ordination the venerable Sub- 
hadda remained alone and separate, earnest, zealous, and 
resolved, and ere long he attained to that supreme goal of 
the higher life for the sake of which men go out from all 



138 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

and every household, gain and comfort, to become houseless 
wanderers, yea, that supreme goal did he by himself, and 
while yet in this visible world, bring himself to the knowl- 
edge of and continue to realize, and to see face to face ! 

Another thing that we have to notice is this, that 
Nirvana is a condition of ecstasy rather than of un- 
consciousness. 

In the " Book of the Great Decease " is this story.^ 

Now at that time a man named Pukkusa, a young Mal- 
lian, a disciple of Alara Kalama's, was passing along the 
high road. . . . And Pukkusa saw the Blessed One seated 
at the foot of a tree. On seeing him, he went up to the 
place where the Blessed One was, and when he had come 
there he saluted the Blessed One, and took his seat re- 
spectfully on one side. And when he was seated Puk- 
kusa, the young Mallian, said to the Blessed One, " How 
wonderful a thing is it Lord ! and how marvelous, that 
those who have gone forth out of the world should pass 
their time in a state of mind so calm ! " Formerly, Lord, 
Alara Kalama was once walking along the high road ; and 
leaving the road he sat down under a certain tree to rest 
during the heat of the day. Now, Lord, five hundred 
carts passed by one after the other, each close to Alara 
Kalama. And a certain man who was following close be- 
hind that caravan of carts went up to the place where 
Alara Kalama was, and when he came there he spoke as 
follows to Alara Kalama : — 

''But, Lord, did you see those five hundred carts go 
by?" 

" No, indeed, sir, I saw them not." 
" But, Lord, did you hear the sound of them ? " 
" No, indeed, su^, I heard not their sound." 
^ xi. 75. 



BUDDHISM. 139 

" But, Lord, were you then asleep ? " 

" No, sir, I was not asleep." 

" But, Lord, were you then conscious ? " 

" Yes, I was conscious, sir." 

" So that you. Lord, though you were both conscious and 
awake, neither saw nor heard the sound of five hundred 
carts passing by one after the other, and each close to you. 
Why, Lord, even your robe was sprinkled over with the 
dust of them ! " 

" It is even so, sir." 

Then thought that man, " How wonderful a thing is it, 
and how marvelous, that those who have gone forth out 
of the world should pass their time in a state of mind so 
calm ! " 

And in this connection the Buddha told a story of 
his own experience more wonderful still. 

Now on one occasion, Pukkusa, I was dwelling at 
Atuma, and was at the threshing-floor. At that time the 
falling rain began to beat and to splash, and the lightnings 
to flash forth, and the thunderbolts to crash ; and two 
peasants, brothers, and four oxen were killed. Then, Puk- 
kusa, a great multitude of people went forth from Atuma, 
and went up to the place where the two peasants, brothers, 
and the four oxen lay killed. 

Now at that time, Pukkusa, I had gone forth from the 
threshing-floor, and was walking up and down thinking at 
the entrance to the threshing-floor. And a certain man 
came, Pukkusa, out of that great multitude of people, and 
when he came up he saluted me and took his place re- 
spectfully on one side. 

And as he stood there, Pukkusa, I said to the man, 
"Why, then, sir, is this great multitude of people as- 
sembled together ? " And he answered : — 



140 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

" But, just now, the falling rain began to beat and to 
splash, and the lightnings to flash forth, and the thunder- 
bolts to crash, and two peasants, brothers, were killed, 
and four oxen. Therefore is this great multitude gathered 
together. But where, Lord, were you ? " 

" I, sir, have been here all the while." 

'' But, Lord, did you see it ? " 

" I, sir, saw nothing.'* 

" But, Lord, did you hear it ? " 

" I, sir, heard nothing." 

" Were you, then. Lord, asleep ? " 

" I, sir, was not asleep." 

*' Were you, then, conscious, Lord ? " 

" Even so, sir." 

Then, Pukkusa, the thought occurred to that man : 
" How wonderful a thing is it, and marvelous, that those 
who have gone forth out of the world should pass their 
time in a state of mind so calm ! " 

We see, then, that Nirvana, so far from being a 
state of annihilation which the devout soul was to 
wish to reach after death, was a moral condition of 
freedom from passion which might be attained here. 
As Max Miiller has said : " If we look in the 
Dhammapada, at every passage where Nirvana is 
mentioned there is not one which would require that 
its meaning should be annihilation ; while most, if 
not all, would become perfectly unintelligible if we 
assigned to the word Nirvana that signification." 

Or, as an equally high authority, Mr. Rhys Da- 
vids, has said : " It follows, I think, that, to the mind 
of the composer of the Buddhavansa, Nirvana meant 
not the extinction of being, but the extinction of the 
three fires of passion." 



BUDDHISM. 141 

But, it may be asked, how are we to account for 
the fact that so many distinguished scholars ^ have 
held a contrary opinion ? How are we to interpret 
such words as these, — which occur in the ''Book 
of the Great Decease " : " And he became con- 
scious that birth was at an end ; that the higher life 
had been fulfilled ; that all that should be done had 
been accomplished, and that after this present life 
there would he no heyondj^ ^ 

I think the explanation of the paradox is this : 
Buddha had been trained in an atmosphere of 
thought which regarded individuality as a curse, 
according to the Sankhya school, because it was a 
delusion ; according to the Vedanta, because true 
happiness consisted only in union with the divine. 

To Buddha neither explanation was satisfactory. 
This was his : At the dissolution of the Skandhas, 
that is at death, the individuality is not destroyed, 
because Kamma remains, and that, taking the place 
of individuality, forms the nucleus around which 
new Skandhas form. So the Buddhists came to 
speak of Kamma as the individuality, and hated it, 
because it was the foundation of sentient life, which 
is sorrow. When Kamma was destroyed individuality 
was destroyed, — not consciousness, but self-will and 
desire. All that remained to those who yet existing 
had gone " out of the world '' was the consciousness 
of a victory won, and the exquisite languor of a soul 
too weary to move and too content to wish, — "a 

^ Oldenburg' claims to have found raany passages in the Singhalese 
books which incline to the doctrine of annihilation. 
2 Book of the Great Decease^ xi. 110. 



142 HIS SrAR IN THE EAST. 

sublime state of conscious rest in Omniscience." ^ 
We are told distinctly that the Buddha was asked by 
his disciples what came after the last death. A soul 
has entered Nirvana, yet the body has still to die. 
There is no Kamma to form a new individuality. 
Will, then, death destroy NirvS»na, — will the perfect 
peace end with death ? And the Buddha would not 
answer. He said the question was not practical. 
I have no doubt he could not answer. But that need 
not surprise us. I believe if the same question had 
been put to Moses he would have said : '' Eternal 
life is to know God. Whether eternal life is ever- 
lasting I do not know. Whether we live after 
death, as the Egyptians teach, I cannot tell. The 
question is not practical ; our prayer should be, — 
' So teach us to number our days, that we may apply 
our hearts unto wisdom.' " 

In some such way the Buddha spake : — 

*' No need hath such to live as ye name life, 
That which hegan in him when he began 
Is finished : He hath wrought the purpose through 
Of what did make him man. 

* ' Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins 
Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes 
Invade his safe, eternal peace : nor deaths 
And lives recur. He goes 

" Unto Nirvana. He is one with Life 
Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be. 
Om Mani Padme, Hum ! The dew-drop slips 
Into the shining sea ! ' ' 

1 It is important in this connection to remember the meaning of 
Nirva;na, which is, "not blown upon." Now as the object of the 
Buddhist was to prevent the flame of life being blown upon by lust, 
the goal would be reached as soon as lust was destroyed. 



BUDDHISM. 143 

Such is Buddhism. The most fearless facing of 
the stupendous facts of life, the most heroic effort 
to attain unto righteousness, the most sublime proc- 
lamation that knowledge is eternal life, and the 
sweetest picture of the soul's rest that the world has 
ever seen apart from the life of Jesus. There are 
not wanting voices to tell us that it will be the re- 
ligion of the future, but that will never be; for 
when all is said Buddhism still remains an Oriental 
religion. It is the pessimism of the Oriental mind 
oppressed by the magnitude of nature, and disgusted 
with itself, that forms the soil in which Buddhism 
can grow. It vanishes like a nightmare at the 
preaching of the redemption of the world by a 
greater man of sorrows than Gautama ; yet, it has 
deep notes within it which find an echo in the hu- 
man heart. To the busy man of affairs Buddha's 
" intelligence," a contemplation that is too deep for 
conscious differentiation, will seem unspeakably fool- 
ish ; but to the religious soul, weary with glib defi- 
nitions of great mysteries, it will not seem improb- 
able that something like that will be found in the 
'' Pavilion where there is the hiding from the strife 
of tongues." 

But, after all, it is not Buddha's philosophy but 
Buddha who has been the power in the East. That 
great and noble personality towers above all religious 
life, at once a refuge and an inspiration. 

If we ask for the secret of the Buddha's power, 
we must find it, as we do the secret of all power, in 
the fact that first of all he embodied in his life the 
Oriental ideal. The man who can do that is the great 



144 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

man — an Alexander, or a Napoleon ; but he did more, 
and thus showed himself one of the greatest of men. 
He not only embodied the Oriental ideal of dignity, 
and contemplation, and asceticism ; he elevated that 
ideal, and showed that dignity was compatible with 
fellowship with the pariah, that contemplation would 
sink to spiritual self-indulgence unless it was joined 
with works of mercy. He showed by his life that 
true asceticism consisted not in self-inflicted torture, 
but in the " fast from sin." It was in this way that 
he came nearest to Jesus. Jesus called himself the 
Son of David, but he soon enlarged that to the Son 
of Man. Can Jesus, then, answer the wants of the 
East as well as the demands of the West ? Can 
he rouse the dreamy Oriental as w^ell as inspire the 
energetic Occidental ? Can he be to the Orient all 
that Buddha is and more ? That is the question 
which we now must try to answer. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Christ's religion and buddhism. 

No objection is more frequently urged against the 
religion of Christ, than that the stories, in the Gos- 
pels, of Jesus' childhood have been borrowed from 
earlier Oriental religious books. Even if this could 
be shown to be true it would not affect the truth of 
Christian revelation ; for that is embodied in the 
character of Jesus, and that was the possession of 
the Church for fifty years, more or less, before the 
impression it made on the four Evangelists was re- 
corded. So that to prove a particular story in any 
one of them to be an error does not affect the rev- 
elation; for the character of Jesus is a part of the 
heritage of humanity, dependent not upon the letter 
of the title-deed so much as upon the consciousness 
of the Church of its truthfulness. But indeed the 
objection will not bear an examination. It will be 
found in the first place that many of the Gospel sto- 
ries have been adapted to Buddhist hearers ; as for 
instance the story of Christ's interview with the Rab- 
bis in the Temple. When it is said that the same 
story is related of Buddha, the first impulse may be 
to assert that the Gospel story is a copy. But look 
at the two. According to the Buddhist tradition the 
yoimg prince shows himself master of all the learn- 



146 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

ing of his teachers and able to instruct them. So 
that we read that one of his teachers fell prostrate 
before him and cried, " Thou art teacher of thy 
teachers." But when we look at the Gospel story, 
we read that Jesus went up to the Temple and sat 
at the feet of the doctors. With childlike faith He 
believed that the appointed teachers of the nation 
could answer the questions which had begun to stir 
his soul. He never dreamed of teaching them. The 
art that would picture Jesus as declaiming before 
the astonished Rabbis has missed the meaning of 
the story. This, then, is the difference : the one is 
the old story of the precocious childhood, and the 
other is the record of a child that was not precocious, 
but who gradually increased in wisdom and stature, 
in favor with God and man. A life that was per- 
fectly natural because of its supernatural grasp upon 
all that was essentially human. 

The story of Jesus learning from the doctors was 
never borrowed from Buddha's teaching of his teach- 
ers. The latter may be a copy of the Gospel story 
by one who had missed the meaning of the original. 
And indeed it is to be remembered that the contact 
of East and West has been nearer than has been 
supposed. 

In one of the splendid Buddhist temples of Japan, 
there hangs a bell of very exquisite workmanship. 
Beside it stand two noble candelabra. The first im- 
pulse is to say that the altars and towers of Europe 
are decked with the spoils of the East, but a closer 
look will disclose a date of the seventeenth century, 
and a closer study will teach us that perhaps at the 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 147 

very time the Pilgrim Fathers were sojourning in 
Holland, staunch Protestant sailors were stealing 
bells and candelabra from the Catholic cathedrals 
of the Netherlands to decorate Buddhist temples in 
Japan ! — a view of history which is startling, per- 
haps, but which may serve to save us from hasty 
generalizations concerning kindred traditions in Bud- 
dhist and Christian Scriptures. 

A second point which must be noticed before be- 
ginning the consideration of the relation between 
Buddhist and Christian theology is Buddhist mo- 
rality. 

There are three points in Buddhist morality which 
it is said show a superiority over Christianity, inas- 
much as the Buddhist morality was preached cen- 
turies before Christ, and the teachings of Christ do 
not, it is asserted, surpass it. Now even if this be 
true, it does not tell against Christianity; on the 
contrary, Jesus distinctly told his disciples that He 
came not to destroy, but to fulfill. So if the reli- 
gion of Jesus be the religion for mankind, then it 
must fulfill not only the law of the Jew, but also all 
that the human heart responds to amongst the Gen- 
tiles. 

Let us look, then, at the three great command- 
ments of the Buddhist law. The first is the de- 
struction of caste, the second the giving of alms, and 
the third the forgiveness of injuries. 

And first, as regards the destruction of the caste 
system, there could no greater mistake than to sup- 
pose that it was an object of attack by Buddha. He 



148 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

simply preached deliverance for all who were op- 
pressed by sorrow, and that gracious message no 
doubt drew many low caste men and women. But 
no sooner were they gathered together than a new 
caste was instituted. Those only could attain to 
Nirvana who became ascetics. Now as that was im- 
possible for the large majority of men, the disciples 
of Buddha were at once divided into two classes ; 
those who sought the higher life, and those who, im- 
mersed in the cares of this world, must content 
themselves on a lower plane. 

The feeling of having a share as a citizen in the king- 
dom of Buddha's children was denied to the laity, much 
more so even than was such a feeling denied in the old 
Brahmanical sacrificial faith to the non-Brahman, who, 
albeit only through the medium of the priest, could draw 
near to the god equally with the priest himself. The 
Buddhist believer, who did not feel in himself the power 
to renounce the world, could console himself with coming 
ages ; he could hope for this, that it might be then vouch- 
safed to him, as a disciple . ., . of one of the countless 
Buddhas who shall come after him, to don the garb of a 
monk, and to taste the bliss of deliverance.-^ 

So we find in Buddhist countries to-day the same 
phenomenon which appears in mediaeval history. 
The monasteries of Europe were no doubt in a sense 
the forerunners of democracy, inasmuch as prince 
and peasant might dwell there in equality, but the 
little democracy itself became a privileged class ; as 
troublesome to kings as the modern nihilist, as the 
kingly connivance at the murder of Becket shows ; 
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 387. 



Christ's religion and buddhism. 149 

and more burdensome to the religious layman than 
any caste system, as the Protestant Reformation 
proves. 

Undoubtedly the social morality of Buddhism was 
an advance on that of Brahmanism, but it was as 
far below the brotherhood of humanity, preached 
by Jesus, as was the Monkish system of the Middle 
Ages. In every Buddhist country to-day the monas- 
tery is a curse. The traveler who stands amongst the 
trees of the Japanese monastery and sees the portly 
abbot, in his yellow robe of silk, seated at ease, while 
a humble brother adjusts the sandal to his sacred 
foot ; or watches him feed the carp, that flash like 
gold through the waters of the mimic lake, begins 
to doubt the reality of his senses. Almost believes 
that he is in England, that Chaucer is alive, that 
these men are those whom the poet saw on the way 
to Canterbury, till he sees them file with downcast 
eyes and folded hands before the altar bright with 
candles ; then he sees that above the altar there is 
no image of the gracious Mary, but the sad and no- 
ble face of Buddha, and the monotonous chant that 
surely must be an " Ave," he learns is the Buddhist 
even-song, " Ora Mani padme omP 

This is no excrescence that has grown on the 
stock, as was the monkish system on Christianity; 
it is a degenerate, but yet a legitimate, fruit of the 
tree which the Buddha planted. 

A second point in which Buddhist morality is said 
to be equal to that of Christ is in the matter of 
almsgiving. 



150 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

It may be said to be almost literally true that a 
Buddhist " never turns his face from any poor man." 
A great army of mendicants, male and female, is 
supported by the offerings of the faithful, most of 
whom are as poor as the widow woman who relieved 
the necessities of Elijah. 

Certainly we need to pause before boasting of our 
charities, when we learn that centuries before Christ 
hospitals were built, and the destitute cared for, 
wherever the religion of Buddha was preached. But 
when we come to examine the motive which lay back 
of this good work, we shall see how far it was re- 
moved from the motive urged by Jesus. We have 
already seen that absolute asceticism was the first 
step toward the attainment of Nirvana. The giving 
up of all worldly possessions was necessary for all 
who entered on the path of a perfect life, but for 
those who could not leave all there remained the 
giving of alms, not, be it remarked, that the neces- 
sities of others might be relieved, — that was a mere 
incident, — but that the hold of the things of this 
world might be loosened. So that Buddha would 
never have used the words of the apostle, which lie at 
the root of all Christian almsgiving : " Whoso hath 
this world's good and seeth his brother have need, 
and shutteth up his compassion from him, how 
dwelleth the love of God in him ? " He would 
rather have said, " Whoso hath this world's good, 
how can he attain Nirvana?" Almsgiving, then, 
was not the sign of a compassion which showed the 
indwelling love of God ; it was the untying of one of 
the cords that held the soul to life. Christian alms- 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 151 

giving is the sharing of that which is considered a 
good. Buddhist almsgiving is the getting rid of 
that which is an evil. 

The last point needful to consider in this connec- 
tion is the forgiveness of injuries. Christ's teaching 
concerning resentment has always been supposed to 
be unique. It is true that there have been those 
who have declared it to be impracticable, but never 
before have we had reason to suppose that it had 
been anticipated. But Buddha's charge to his dis- 
ciples lays as much stress upon the importance of 
bearing injuries with patience as do Jesus' words to 
the disciples. Again and again they are told not 
to resist injuries, not to return insults, but to bear 
themselves with patience in the midst of a perverse 
generation. 

He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, 
him I call a real driver ; other people are but holding the 
reins. 

Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome 
evil by good ; let him overcome the greedy by liberaUty, 
the liar by truth ! 

Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body ! Leave 
the sins of the body, and with thy body practice virtue ! 

Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy 
tongue ! Leave the sins of the tongue, and practice virtue 
with thy tongue I 

Beware of the anger of the mind, and control thy 
mind ! Leave the sins of the mind, and practice virtue 
with thy mind ! 

The wise who control their body, who control their 



152 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

tongue, the wise who control theu' mind, are indeed well 
controlled.^ 

There is a beautiful story of a father, who, being 
murdered by his enemy, with his dying breath said 
to his son : '^ My son, look not too far and not too 
near. For enmity comes not to an end by enmity, 
my son ; by non-enmity, my son, enmity comes to an 
end." 2 But if we ask the reason that is assigned 
for a course of action apparently so opposed to the 
instincts of the human heart, we find that the reason 
is as far as possible removed from that given by 
Jesus in counseling the same thing. Jesus said, " All 
ye are brethren." '' Ye must be the children of your 
father in heaven, for He maketh his sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and on the unjust." "As your father," Jesus seems 
to say, — " as your father continues to bless in spite 
of evil, so do you. Good is more powerful than evil. 
It will prevail. Ye are all brethren, ye must not re- 
turn evil with evil, for that is to call forth evil again 
in him. Ye must quench the fiery darts of his evil 
spirit in the stream of your love, until, his evil being 
exhausted, ye save his soul alive." Now whether 
that be practical or not it is intelligible. We know 
that what Jesus wished to teach was that every man, 
who had learned that God was his father, was to be 
anxious about his brother's soul and not at all anx- 
ious about his own dignity, or rights, or peace, if only 
he might save his brother's soul. 

But if we look at the sequel of the Buddhist story 

^ Dhammapadaj chap. xvii. 

2 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha^ p. 294. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 153 

already alluded to we shall learn that nothing was 
further from the thought of the moralist than this. 
Passivity was recommended because it was on the 
whole more profitable than resistance. In the long 
run the peaceable man would have the best of it ; 
would not beget enemies, but would reap the advan- 
tages of peace. So that this doctrine, which at first 
sight promised to be the anticipation of the Chris- 
tian doctrine of love, is seen to be a most pusillan- 
imous code, far less likely to lead to moral great- 
ness than the rugged Eoman doctrine of virtue or 
strength. It is not the generous self-surrender of 
love, but the cool reflection that peace is more prof- 
itable than war, which is the mainspring of Buddhist 
morality.^ 

But there was a deeper reason still, one which lay 
nearer to the heart of the Buddhist than anything 
else, and that was the thought that all resistance, 
all moral excitement, was agitating^ and any agita- 
tion was hurtful. What they were striving to reach 
was Nirvana, — the calm that was not blown upon. 
Whenever they gave way to anger they disturbed 
the soul's calm. That was why they were not to re- 
sist evil. We see, then, that the apostolic injunction 
to be " angry " yet not sin would have been incom- 
prehensible to the Buddhist. Christ's cleansing of 
the Temple, his withering denunciation of hypocrisy, 
which made his disciples think of one eaten up by a 
zeal for a holy cause, — all that would have seemed 
to the Buddhist a foolish waste of energy a use- 
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 292. 



154 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

less disturbance of the soul's calm,^ The sense of 
duty to a brother's highest good, that can lead the 
same life to denounce his evil and suffer patiently 
his resentment, which (together with love to God) 
lies at the root of Christian morality, would be as 
incomprehensible to the Buddhist as the pregnant 
paradox of Jesus, " He that will save his soul 
shall lose it." 

Nothing could have been further from the thought 
of Jesus than any exhortation to calm. " I am not 
come to send peace, but a sword ;" " I am come to 
set a man at variance with his father ; " "A man's 
foes shall be they of his own household." 

He was continually calling the attention of his 
disciples to the fact that the following of Him would 
lead to suffering and disappointment and shame. 

Now it was inevitable that this doctrine of non- 
resistance, because of its disturbing effect on the 
soul's calm, would lead to the obliteration of all dis- 
tinction between good and evil. And this we find 
to be the case. "Those who cause me pain and 
those who cause me joy, to all I am alike ; affection 
and hatred I know not. In joy and sorrow I remain 
unmoved, in honor and dishonor ; throughout I am 
alike. That is my equanimity." ^ 

It is constantly urged in favor of Buddhism that 
it was the first religion to inculcate moral exertion 
as a means of salvation. And certainly in as far as 

1 The Neoplatonists were so impressed with the importance of 
maintaining the soul's calm that they condemned suicide chiefly on 
that account. See Lecky's 'History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 
43. 

2 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 298. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 155 

this served as a substitute for ritualism, it was a 
great advance on what had gone before. But it will 
not bear the test of too strict an examination. Bud- 
dha himself, and his disciples after him, seem to have 
been profoundly impressed with the reality of an 
evil spirit, hostile to the moral improvement of man- 
kind. Yet when we ask how that spirit was to be 
overcome, we learn from the parable of the tortoise 
and the jackal. The jackal endeavoring to seize 
the tortoise he withdrew into his shell, and the jackal 
having waited long in the hopes of gaining an ad- 
vantage at length gave over in despair, finding that 
the tortoise would put forth neither foot nor tail.^ 
Moral exertion, then, consisted simply in withdraw- 
ing into the citadel of the soul ; there the life re- 
mained a prisoner to the end. Could anything be 
further from the Christian counsel, " Resist the devil 
and he will flee from you " ? 

This belief in the watchfulness of evil and the 
susceptibility of human nature to evil begot a ti- 
midity of spirit which made- the healthy Christian 
freedom, '' to the pure all things are pure," impossi- 
ble, and so prevented any progress in holiness. 

But of course the weakness of the whole moral 
system lay in the impossibility of prayer. If moral- 
ity be the ''custom'" which has slowly formed as the 
result of the gradual revelation of God's v/ill, — 
which is the assumption with which Christian mo- 
rality begins, — then the thing of most importance 
is that the " way " for the revelation of that will be 
kept open by communion between the human and the 

1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 313. 



156 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

divine spirit, and that the human spirit by that spir- 
itual exercise be strengthened to receive the same. 
But Buddhism, starting with the assumption that 
gods and men were both dependent upon moral exer- 
tion, had no place for prayer, consequently moral 
"exertion" was only self -contemplation, which, so far 
from being exertion, the effort of the human spirit 
to commune with the source of light and truth, be- 
came, before long, a state of moral and mental ab- 
straction, which led to nothing but self-conceit or 
spiritual vacuity. 

There are some, indeed, who hold that the aban- 
donment of prayer was in itself a distinct moral gain, 
inasmuch as prayer is essentially selfish. But they 
have in mind something very different from Chris- 
tian prayer, the essence of which is unselfishness, 
which, in the last analysis, resolves itself into a pe- 
tition that the individual will may not be done. So 
that, considered simply as a moral exercise, nothing 
has ever been suggested as so likely to destroy self- 
ishness as Christian prayer.^ 

While, then, we do not admit that the teaching of 
Buddha on the subject of morals is equal to that of 
Christ, yet no one can fail to be struck with admi- 
ration at two things in Buddhism. The one is the 
saint, and the other is the missionary. It is easy to 
call attention to the selfishness, and the ignorance, 
and the sensuality of Buddhist monasteries, for there 

1 * ' Prayer is just life ; inspiration, and respiration, in the king- 
dom of God : receiving and giving y the circulation of Love,^^ Letters 
from a Mystic, p. 157. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 167 

is enough of all ; but as in Catholicism there were 
found a Fra Angelico, a St. Bernard, and these but 
representatives of a great company of saints known 
only to God, who, in the midst of the corruption of 
the Church, were the salt of the earth, so it is in 
Buddhism. 

There are to-day in Japan holy men who sit un- 
moved amidst all the changing fashions of that vola- 
tile people, wrapt in the contemplation of the Un- 
changeable, so full of dignity, so gentle, so courteous, 
so peaceful, the fires of passion which once seemed so 
fierce they might never be quenched are extinguished, 
and there shines from the life a sort of moon-like ra- 
diance that speaks of the day of struggle passed, of 
the evening of perfect peace. If by their fruits we 
are to know men, then we may be sure that by such 
a life has stood one whose name he did not know. 
If we take note of such a life, we will be sure that it 
has been with Jesus. No wonder that when such 
an one dies the monks should feel again something 
of that thrill which made them tremble when they 
stood as novices on the threshold of what they 
thought would be a higher life. We are told they 
gather about the dying saint, and lay on his heart a 
coil of spun cotton ; and standing round him, and 
holding each in his hand a thread, to draw some 
virtue from the holy life they failed to imitate, they 
say, " I take refuge in Buddha," and the saint re- 
plies, " I come to thee, O Lord." " Buddha, save 
us," cry the brothers, and the flickering breath as it 
issues from the lips parted in a smile of ecstasy 



158 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

murmurs, " O Essence Divine, with joy, with rapture, 
I come to lose myself in Thee." ^ 

There can be no doubt that such lives have had a 
profound influence in extending the limits of the king- 
dom of Buddha. What has been said of the early 
Christian anchorites applies equally to Buddhism. 

The first condition of all really great moral excellence 
is a spirit of genuine self-sacrifice and self-renunciation, 
. . . which exercises a most attractive influence upon 
mankind. Imperfect and distorted as was the ideal of 
the anchorite, deeply too as it was perverted by the ad- 
mixture of a spiritual selfishness, still the example of many 
thousands who, in obedience to what they beheved to be 
right, voluntarily gave up all that men hold dear, cast to 
the winds every compromise with enjoyment, and made 
extreme self-abnegation the very principle of their hves, 
was not wholly lost upon the world.^ 

Of the missionary I may not speak at length, 
though the subject is full of interest. There have 
been three missionary religions: Christianity, which 
ever has and must be such, because it is the religion 
of the Son of Man; Mahometanism, which prose- 
lytes with the sword ; and Buddhism, which has spent 
its force. And yet the annals of the last might be 
compared for heroism, for zeal, and for results ac- 
complished, to the records of Christian missions. 
It has been said. The Brahman seeks to save his 
own soul ; the Buddhist seeks to save his own soul 
by saving another. This is not true of Buddhists 

^ Tliis description was given to the author by Mrs. Leonowens, 
who was present at the death of a Buddhist saint in Siam. 
2 Lecky's Hist, of European Morals^ vol. ii. p. 156. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 159 

in general, yet it is nearly true of the Buddhist mis- 
sionary, though not as the logical outcome of their 
system, but rather as the result of the influence of 
that Spirit which ever breathes on the soul that 
seeks for good. 

And now let us compare Buddhist philosophy 
with Christian theology, for that must be the test to 
which we must bring the religion of Jesus. Can it 
sympathize with mankind ? Can it suffer with every 
part of the great human family in its search for 
truth ? Has it an explanation of that secret which 
Buddha tried to answer ? 

We have seen that the starting-point of Buddhist 
philosophy was sorrow. Buddha called men to him 
as to one over whom sorrow had no more power, be- 
cause the sensibilities were deadened. Now Jesus 
came with the same appreciation of sorrow and be- 
gan with the invitation, '' Come unto me all ye that 
labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
Again, He said to his disciples, " In the world ye 
shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have 
overcome the world." Not, be it noticed, not by 
deadening his sensibilities, for we read that so keen 
were they that " He endured the cross and disre- 
garded the shame, because of the joy that was ever 
before Him." 

And now let us go a step further. The sorrow of 
life, said Buddha, is caused by the impermanence of 
life. But Christ felt that too. " Heaven and earth," 
He said, " shall pass away." He wept when he 
thought how soon the solid structure of the city He 



160 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

loved should be dissolved. The disciple who came the 
nearest to his heart wrote words which the Buddhist 
can appreciate perhaps better than we. " Love not 
the world, neither the things that are in the world ; 
for all that is in the world, the lust of the eyes, 
the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, is not of 
the Father, but is of the world, and the world 
passeth away, and the lust thereof ; " and these 
words let us into the heart of the whole question. 
The religion of Jesus appreciates as profoundly as 
that of Buddha the sorrow of life ; but Christ de- 
clares that impermanence is the characteristic only 
of the " world," that which has no consciousness of 
the life of the Father in it. Buddhism knows no 
such distinction. The heroism of the martyr, and 
the subtlety of the serpent, both are the result of 
the Skandhas ; neither has the life of the Father in 
it. All shall pass away, said Buddha. But a disciple 
of Jesus wrote, " Some things shall be removed that 
those things which cannot be shaken may remain." 

Still, it may be said, " After all here are two opin- 
ions concerning life : there is something to be said 
for each ; how is one to decide between them ? " Let 
us follow the stream of Buddhism a little nearer to 
its source. Life, said Buddha, is sorrow. Sorrow is 
caused by impermanency. Man is carried on like a 
fluttering leaf, or like a straw that the tide bears on 
its surface. Here it touches the bank of love, and 
there it is drifted to the land of sickness and decay. 
Striving to attach itself to something, it is drifted 
out to the sea of death, only to float back again be- 
tween the banks of life. Man is the slave of the 



Christ's religion and buddhism. 161 

circumstances that made him. His personality is 
the fiction of the Skandhas. 

Now what says Christ to this ? Says ? He says 
nothing. He stands before us in his majesty, and 
as we gaze on Him we come to know with a certainty 
that no logical deduction can attain : That He is not 
the slave of time and tide. He is a power ; He is 
not an effect ; He is a cause. Whatever men may 
be, Jesus is not a thing,, He is a person, He is a 
Mng, We may be the result of the Skandhas, but 
the perfect man lays his hand on nature's rocks, 
and they are as wax in his fingers. The voice of 
the true man calls back the dead. The voice of 
the true man the waves and winds obey. The true 
man is nature's master. The perfect man drives 
back with a word the cloud of sorrow, and the dark- 
ened life blooms with beauty as heaven's light 
rushes in. The perfect man touches the soul all 
shriveled up with sin, and the life leaps and walks 
and glorifies God. All this the perfect, the true, 
the natural man does. We have seen but one nat- 
ural man. He does not tell us what he is. He 
asks us what we think of him, and we try to answer 
by comparing him with the best of the unnatural 
men, — Elias, the great reformer, Jeremias, the man 
of sorrow, one of the prophets who foretold a greater. 
But there is no response. It is only when that which 
is like a rock within the individual, that which is un- 
shaken by public opinion, answers, " Thou art the 
Son of the living God," that the Son of Man reveals 
himself and says, "Thou art blessed." Flesh and 

blood did not reveal this, no meditation on nature or 
11 



162 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

on man led to this : but my Father in heaven, the 
source of all life, whom you see in seeing me, hath 
revealed unto that within you which is partaker of 
his own life, that the true man is not the result of 
circumstances, but the son of the living God. That 
faith is the result of the Incarnation, the manifesta- 
tion of the Son of man. In the power of that man, 
of that Son, the men and women who knew Jesus 
" after the flesh," and the innumerable company of 
those who have known Him in the spirit, rose to be- 
lieve that they too were persons, — children. In the 
person of Jesus they saw at once the revelation of 
the personality of God and the assurance of the per- 
sonality of man. 

The Christian answer to the Buddhist doctrine of 
the " Skandhas " is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, 
the manifestation of one who knew that He " came 
from God and went to God." " In his light men have 
seen light." There can be no question that the sup- 
posed revival of Buddhism among certain people in 
our own land is due to the waning belief in the per- 
manence of human personality. It is then of the 
utmost importance that we should remember that 
the Gospel assumes the personality of God and of 
man, and that apart from that assumption the words 
of Jesus have no meaning. Now Buddhism inherited 
its skepticism of personality from Brahmanism, but 
the pantheism of Brahmanism rested on the assump- 
tion that the essence of life is poioer. Now nothing 
can be more certain than that power must return 
again to its original source. The everlasting divi- 
sion of power is unthinkable. But Jesus' revelation 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 163 

of God is not primarily a Being of power, but of 
love. But undivided love is as unthinkable as di- 
vided power. It is true that 

Love's sum remains what it was before ; 

but love presupposes an object, and self-conscious- 
ness and will. So that if love imparts itself^ it must 
impart the essentials of personality. This is not 
stated in logical sequence in the Gospel, but it is 
assumed. The essence of personality with Buddha 
was Kamma, the result of selfishness ; the essence of 
personality with Jesus was love realizing Sonship. 
" Because we were (by creation) sons, God hath 
sent forth his Spirit in our hearts, whereby we cry 
Abba, Father," — that is the cry of a latent per- 
sonality realizing its possibility. 

. . . God 's aU, man 's naught : 
But, also God, whose pleasure brought 
Man into being, stands away 
As it were a handbreadth off, to give 
Room for the newly-made to live, 
And look at Him from a place apart, 
And use his gifts of brain and heart, 
Given indeed but to keep forever. 
Who speaks of man, then, must not sever 
Man's very elements from man, * 

Saying '* But all is God 's,'' whose plan 
Was to create man and then leave him 
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 
But able to glorify Him too. 
As a mere machine could never do, 
That prayed or praised all unaware 
Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, 
Made perfect as a thing of course. 
Man, therefore, stands on his own stock 
Of love and power as a pin-point rock, 
And, looking to God who ordained divorce 



164 fflS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Of the rock from his boundless continent, 

Sees in his power made evident, 

Only excess by a million-fold 

O'er the power God gave man in the mould. 

But that personality is progressive. " He came unto 
his own / ... to as many as received Him, to them 
gave He power to become (consciously) the sons of 
God." " God is the only perfect personality."^ The 
beauty with which Browning has stated this is 
equaled by the profound insight which led him to 
incorporate it in the poem of " Christmas Eve," as 
the necessary condition of the Incarnation. 

That is the real question at issue between not only 
Buddhism and Christianity, but nearly all Oriental 
religions and Christianity. It is popularly supposed 
that man forms his conception of God in accord- 
ance with his notion of himself; but I think the 
religious history of India will teach us that the con- 
trary is true. It was the pantheism of India that 
made belief in the personality of man impossible. 
Divinity yawned, as it were, a great gulf at man's 
feet ; into it he must inevitably fall. How was it 
possible for any individual to stand forth and de- 
clare that he alone was a person ; not only an effect, 
but a cause ; not merely a creature, but a creator ; 
not merely natural, but also supernatural? Such 
presumption was impossible save for the ma»n who 
was conscious of having, before the world was, shared 
the glory of that unseen, majestic, irresistible, omni- 
present power which He could call his Father, the es- 
sence of whose being is love and light. Such an one 
could speak of himself as a Son. Now if in the 

^ Lotze, Philosophy of Religion, trans, by George T. Ladd. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 165 

presence of such an one the Buddhist could come to 
feel that he too was partaker of this indestructible 
sonship, the very corner-stone of the Buddhist phi- 
losophy would be removed, and every noble aspira- 
tion and every virtuous deed would find its place 
in that building the corner-stone of which is Jesus 
Christ. 

So much for the relation of Christian theology to 
the starting-point of Buddhist philosophy; but can 
it go farther and enter into the solemn doctrine of 
Kamma ? 

Of course, if it be once admitted that man is a 
person, that death is an incident which the person- 
ality survives, Kamma can no longer be regarded 
as the survivor of the previous life, — a sort of evil 
individuality from which man should seek to escape; 
but still that which Kamma represents remains, as 
an awful fact, to be accounted for. Pantheism shad- 
ing off into agnosticism was the theological basis of 
Buddhism, the doctrine of the Skandhas was its phil- 
osophical, and Kamma its moral, expression. The 
Incarnation we believe to be the answer to the first ; 
what has the religion of Christ to say to the second ? 
It cannot be ignored, for the law of Kamma bears 
the same relation to ethics that the law of the con- 
servation of physical force does to physics. 

We have already described this doctrine at such 
length that it will be only necessary to recall its 
meaning here. St. Paul's words describe it: "What- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Let 
us see what that means. Here is a man, we will say, 



166 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

who lias 110 thought in life save to heap up wealth 
and gratify his senses. He succeeds ; at last he 
dies. Now what becomes of that force of selfishness 
which he set in motion? Modern science tells us 
that by the law of heredity it is transmitted to the 
man's descendants ; it may lie latent for a genera- 
tion or two, but like a subterranean river it will come 
to the surface at last. But Buddhism would not 
rest content with this answer ; it would say that is 
one of the effects, but what have you to say of the 
man himself? What has been the effect on him? 
Is he to remain the same forever? What scheme 
have you for changing him ? Or take his case be- 
fore he dies. Every sin begets the desire to sin. 
Every good impulse resisted makes a man less able 
to struggle against temptation. How is a man to 
escape from the bondage? We see that it is the 
same problem by which the Jew was perplexed. He 
had broken the law. How could that violation be 
atoned for ? How could he be free from sin ? The 
Buddhist answer was a perfectly logical one. It 
was, as we have seen, an exhortation to ascetcism. 
Suppress every wish and evil wishes will be smoth- 
ered. Crush every hope and there will be no dis- 
appointment. Kill every passion and there will be 
no lust. 

Now the Christian answer was very different. St. 
Paul, who appreciated as profoundly as any Buddhist 
the stupendous power of Kamma, wrote, '' The law of 
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free 
from the law of sin and of death." That is a very 
remarkable expression, " the law of the spirit of life." 



Christ's religion and buddhism. 167 

There is no escape by violating or disregarding law, 
only the law of sin and of death is subordinated to 
the " law of the spirit of life," just as the law of 
gravitation by which a rock is held fast rooted in the 
ground is subordinated by the high law of mechanics 
by which the same rock is lifted up and set for a 
polished corner of the temple. The Buddhist and 
Christian doctrine of salvation are as unlike as the 
different advice that might be given to a man who 
was about to pass through a plague - stricken city. 
One would say, Remember that whatever you touch is 
tainted, therefore eat as little, drink as little, breathe 
as little as you can ; speak to no man, touch no one ; 
the less your contact with life, the less your chance 
of death. And another would say, Seek to lay hold 
of the law of life, eat and drink, and fill your lungs 
with pure air, build up your system, do not think of 
death ; but go your way through the streets of the 
stricken city, touch all whom you can help, bear 
yourself like Italy's brave king in cholera-stricken 
Naples, and the law of the spirit of life will make 
you free from the law of death. 

Now what is the thing that can bring us under the 
influence of the law of life ? For unless we can 
find that we must admit that the Buddhist is right, 
that the law of death is inevitable. 

The Christian answer is, that the revelation of 
Jesus Christ has saved great multitudes whom no 
man can number from the vanity which Buddhism 
deplores, and from the pessimism which is the Bud- 
dhist antidote. How ? In this way : — 

In seeing the life of Jesus, men have felt the 



168 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

silent rebuke upon their own low lives. In the ad- 
miration which has deepened into love, they have 
recognized the presence of unsuspected ideals and 
become conscious of a power to realize them. For- 
getful of themselves, they have followed that life 
along its path of beauty and power, and seen it end 
in a death which revealed at once not only the vanity 
but the horror of sin, and yet showed that neither 
sin nor death can separate God's child from his love 
and care. Men have come down from Calvary con- 
vinced that God is on their side in the battle against 
sin and sorrow. When they tried to analyze their 
position in life, they found that the principle of faith 
by which they identified themselves with the Son of 
God was the means by which a sense of pardon for 
the past was produced and an assurance of future 
salvation. A new principle of life has come into their 
lives ; they have been, as it were, born again. But 
the Buddhist will say : How about the past ? You 
can't get rid of that ; it has produced its effect upon 
your character. You are still under law. And the 
Christian will answer : Somehow, since this change 
has come, the past, which was a burden, is now no 
burden at all. I suppose my faith in God's power, 
my faith in God's love, which did not hesitate at the 
sacrifice of Jesus to bring me to Him, has made me 
feel that He could take care of the past. But in- 
deed I am not under '' law, but under grace." I am 
like a man who had within him the seeds of con- 
sumption, living all uncared for, in a climate that 
sooner or later would work death ; that is to be 
under '' law." I have been led into a balmy atmos- 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 169 

phere where day by day a physician tends me ; that 
is to be ''under" personal favor or " grace." 

So I have learned that health can never be gained 
by the suppression of disease, but by the gift of the 
principle of life. I know that I must reap what I 
have sown, but when I reap I know that the seeds 
of the grain cannot root themselves in my redeemed 
nature. I reap in repentance, in humility, in thank- 
fulness, even in joy ; for I can in this way enter into 
the fellowship of my Master's suffering, be made 
conformable unto his death, and so attain to the res- 
urrection unto a higher life. 

However men may formulate the doctrine, the 
fact has been that, by the influence of the cross of 
Christ, men have been able to turn their faces away 
from the Gorgon head of the past, the horror of 
which has well-nigh petrified the East, and echo St. 
Paul's shout of joy, '' Forgetting those things which 
are behind, I press toward the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." That 
is the everlasting hope which has manifested itself 
in individual endeavor and national progress. 

If, says the Buddhist, you will only wait, if the 
soul will, as it were, hold its breath, Kamma will be 
exhausted. But the Christian says, " ' Up, let us be 
going.' 1 In the cross of Christ I find the assurance 
of God's pardon for the past and the promise of his 
favor for the future. If you tell me that law must 
work itself out to the end, I say that, by the influ- 

1 See Robertson's sermon on the text *' Sleep on now and take 
your rest — Up, let us be going." 



170 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

ence of Jesus I am being drawn into the natural 
atmosphere of the soul, and in that atmosphere sin 
cannot have dominion over me, and sorrow and sigh- 
ing flee away." 

The fact is that Buddhism had not rightly diag- 
nosed the disease of humanity. It is sin, not sorrow, 
which is a '' sore burden too heavy to bear." Sin 
begins in selfishness and continues from despair. 
Now the cross of Christ, "constraining" man to 
love, makes selfishness appear shameful, and the res- 
urrection, opening the pathway to eternal life, slays 
despair. That is redemption. So that the Chris- 
tian can say, " It is no longer I that do what I would 
not, but sin which dwelleth in me," and in the same 
breath, " Sin shall not reign in my mortal body." 

In considering the revelation of the cross of 
Christ, by which man is redeemed from the power 
of sin, we find that it not only answers the problem 
of Kamma, but also throws light on the "Way." 
The inertness of the divinity of Brahmanism had 
thrown on man the labor of Sisyphus, — the task of 
rolling his own soul up the hill of God. The Brah- 
man said the oneness of man and God is dependent 
upon Kamma, some human "act," ^. e., sacrifice. 
Buddha said : Gods (if there be such) and men are 
alike the slaves of Kamma, therefore exercise your 
spiritual nature so as to suppress it. In both reli- 
gions the inactive East has declared its belief in the 
efficacy of human effort. And that faith Buddha 
formulated in the doctrine of the "Way." 

To some it may seem as if nothing could be 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 171 

further from this doctrine than St. Paul's teaching, 
for he seemed to count all human effort as useless, 
but that is the result of shallow criticism. St. Paul 
would have welcomed the moral earnestness of Bud- 
dhism ; he, too, would have said all men are the 
slaves of Kamma ; he would have agreed with Bud- 
dha that this law could never be counteracted by 
Brahmanical Kamma, or sacrifice; but he would 
have asserted quite as strongly that it could not be 
suppressed by self-destruction. What then ? Would 
he have said that man was a passive instrument in 
this matter of his own fate ? Far from it ! He 
would have declared that the law of sin could only 
be overcome by a most tremendous effort of the hu- 
man spirit, — by the great Kamma, or act of man's 
spiritual nature, by which he identifies himself with 
the conqueror of sin and death, — which St. Paul 
called, by a power of spiritual insight never equaled, 
faith} By faith Paul meant that absolute trust in 
God as a Father, by which the prophet had said that 
the '' just," those who have been brought into the 
right relation to God, live. That trust is the result 
of the revelation of Jesus Christ : the disciple gains 
that spirit from his master. The perfectly trustful 
man is the perfectly " just " man, because the "• just," 
or right relation of the soul to God, is the relation 
of a child to its father.^ That trust, St. Paul said, 
was effected by the cross of Christ. The Brahman 
was right in declaring the necessity of sacrifice, and 

^ * ' Religion is never exactly a demonstrable theorem, but the 
conviction of its truth is a deed that is accredited to character." 
Lotze's Philosophy of Religion. 

2 See Erskine's Spiritual Order, 



172 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the Buddhist in insisting upon moral exertion. Both 
are justified in Christian faith — the effect o£ sacri- 
fice and also a spiritual act. 

It may be objected that this is not as logical as 
the Buddhist doctrine. It may be, but it does not 
follow that it is not true. There is more in man 
than the logical faculty. This " faith," of which the 
Scripture speaks, is not, as it is sometimes said, the 
paralysis of reason. It is the very glorification of 
reason. It is the powerful exercise of the whole 
spiritual nature in response to the divine call. When 
that has been heard, sin is fearful no more, as to the 
Buddhist, because of its inevitable penalty, but be- 
cause it is the violation of the perfect law of love. 

There remains one more question to consider, and 
that is the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana and the 
Christian heaven. 

To gain rest ; to find a refuge from which pain 
can be excluded, a harbor where the soul is no more 
ruffled by the chilling winds of life : to find a secret 
chamber and shut to the door, and exclude even self- 
consciousness, — that is what the tired soul wants. 
Quiet and rest, and peace and calm. What can be 
better? Apparently Christ had nothing better to 
offer. He came with an invitation to '^ resi^," and 
he departed leaving his ^'^ peace^ 

But Nirvana and heaven are not the same. Bud- 
dha's rest is the relaxation of a soul tired out at the 
end of life, which sinks exhausted never more to 
rise. Christ's rest is the unwearied exercise of the 
highest faculties. It is the rest of the lark, who 



Christ's religion and buddhism. 173 

hangs between heaven and earth intoxicated with 
the very joy of existence, strong in the conscious- 
ness that the eternal winds are uplifting her. Bud- 
dha's peace is gained by severing every tie that 
binds man to his fellows. The Christian peace is 
found in the perfect accord of kindred souls united 
in the adoration of the ideal life which at last they 
see. 

Buddha's highest joy was to be found in an absorp- 
tion which would silence the individual cry. But to 
the Christian the impatience with this petty individ- 
uality gives place to a great hope. Now our indi- 
viduality is like an organ in a damp room. Most of 
the keys stick, and only here and there a querulous 
sound is heard. But take the organ into a genial 
atmosphere, let all the silent notes speak, and then 
its individuality will be a glorious thing. And the 
perfect speaking of every human instrument will 
make the eternal harmony that echoes about the 
throne of God. 

Thus it stands then. Buddha says this individ- 
uality is so miserable a thing that no real peace can 
come till it is destroyed. This individual life, Jesus 
tells us in the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, 
and the prodigal son, is so precious a thing that it is 
worth all sacrifice to bring it where it can show its 
glory. It is only partial now, but hereafter all the 
unsuspected faculties will spring to life. Every soul 
shall find itself partaker of all humanity's glories. 
Each shall be poet and orator, and artist and mu- 
sician, because each will be a saint, and a saint is 
a holy man, and a holy man means a whole man, 



174 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

and the whole man is he in whom dwells all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily. Buddha says to 
humanity, " You are beaten in the battle of life ; 
you will find peace only when you have reached a 
place of safety, where no more wounds can come." 
He appeals to our weakness. Jesus says, '' Be of 
good cheer ; I have overcome the world." " In my 
father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare 
a place for you." " In that day ye shall know that 
I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you." 
In the consciousness of that power humanity shall 
wake up after God's likeness and be satisfied with 
it. No Buddhist anticipates with a thrill the dawn- 
ing of that day when, in the joyous confusion of 
that home-coming, the children of God who were 
scattered abroad find all unexpectedly the gifts that 
have been prepared for them; when the lame man 
shall leap as an hart, the ears of the deaf shall be 
unstopped, the blind shall see. Verily in that day 
the gospel, the good news, shall be preached to our 
poor humanity, when we see the things that God 
has prepared for them who love him. Not an in- 
dividuality more and more isolated and cramped till 
it would hide itself for very shame, but an individ- 
uality which loses its peculiarities and eccentricities 
through a development which makes it partaker of 
all the glory of humanity : that is the gospel of the 
Christ, and it appeals to the noblest instinct of our 
nature, an undying hope. 

I have endeavored, as far as time would permit, 
to review the salient points of Buddhism, and com- 



Christ's religion and buddhism. 175 

pare them with the religion of Jesus. Beginning 
with the philosophy of Buddhism, we have traced its 
teachings till they are lost in the clouds of Nirvana. 
But it may be said nothing is easier than to refute 
any religious system by taking a bit here and there, 
and commenting on it. A religion, like a man, has 
a right to be justified by faith, and not by works. 
The true way would be to ask what does a religion 
seek to do, and so judge it by its spirit. 

Now the spirit of Buddhism is pessimism. Its 
great hope is hopelessness. " Vanity of vanities, all 
is vanity." That is the Buddhist preaching. On 
that principle conduct is regulated, and it consists in 
an effort to lessen the contact with all life, because 
all life without distinction is vanity. Those who de- 
light to speak of Jesus as the disciple of Gautama 
point to the same tone in his teaching. ^' How hardly 
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
heaven ! " " Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon 
earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where 
thieves break through and steal." But they miss 
the meaning of Jesus' pessimism. That arises not 
from the essential vanity of life, but from the vanity 
of life divorced from God. The interest of a man 
in the jewel case from which the pearl of great price 
had been lost — that is pitiful. The child who has 
lost his father, wandering aimlessly through the 
splendid palace, seeking to solace himself with toys 
and baubles — that is pathetic. When the son tried 
to feed his soul in rioting and drunkenness, he found 
"the vanity of vanities;" but when he "came to 
himself," when he came home, the ring and the best 



176 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

robe, the fatted calf, the music and the dancing, 
were the fit symbols of an eternal joy. Life to the 
Buddha seemed vain, because there was no purpose 
back of it. Life seemed vain to Jesus, because 
he knew the purpose back of it, and saw men war- 
ring against it. That thought has been the main- 
spring of Christian activity. The incarnation of 
Jesus, the manifestation of the divine in the human, 
was a revelation of the divine already in the human. 
It was the holding up of a lamp in a dark room, by 
which one might see the lost jewels amidst the rub- 
bish of life. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness," said Jesus, " and all these 
things shall be added to you." Men filled with 
that spirit have looked on civilization and all its 
splendor as the outward and visible sign of the in- 
ward and spiritual grace of God's favor upon man. 
Civilization is the gradual adjustment of human life 
to eternal law. 

Against civilization two forces have ever been at 
work. First, atheism, manifesting itself in materi- 
alism, which has always crumbled and fallen as did 
the splendor of Rome. And secondly, pessimism, 
which, because it is agnostic, knows nothing of God, 
is ignorant of the immanent Divine life, loses in- 
terest in the symbol that symbolizes nothing, and 
sinks down to wait for the end. Buddhism, with its 
pure morality and noble self-denial, ought to have 
civilized the East. It failed, because like a bridge 
which men would build across some mighty chasm, 
there was no hand on the further shore to make fast 
the cable on which the structure should swing. 



CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 177 

So far humanity has seen but one religion which, 
looking with calm eye on the beauty and majesty of 
life, has said, " Behold, it is all very good ; " " To 
the pure all things are pure;" and "Love not the 
world neither the things that are in the world, for 
the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." Who 
shall interpret the oracle ? It has been interpreted 
by the Son of Man, who took a little child and set 
him in the midst, and said, " The kingdom of God 
is like this ; except ye become as little children ye 
cannot see the kingdom of God." Childlike faith in 
the father's goodness, childlike love of the brethren, 
childlike hope which no cloud can obscure, — that is 
the essence of the kingdom of God. But the king- 
doms of the world are parts of the kingdom of God, 
if that spirit be in them. The only religion which is 
favorable to human development is the religion of 
the child Jesus. The power of civilization is not 
materialism nor pessimism, but the childlike spirit, 
as the prophet foresaw." The wolf shall dwell with 
the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the 
kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the f atling 
together ; and a little child shall lead them." That 
reign of peace and plenty shall not come with ag- 
nosticism, but shall come, the same prophet says, 
" when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of 
the Lord as the waters cover the sea." 

12 



CHAPTEE VII. 

HINDUISM. 

That Buddhism could not become the popular re- 
ligion of India, any one familiar with Hindu thought 
might have prophesied. No " religion " which ban- 
ished God could long satisfy a people whose whole 
history had witnessed to the belief that " in Him we 
live and move and have our being." 

Buddhism was a revolt from Brahmanism. The 
Supreme Being, who dwelt in self-satisfied seclusion, 
unmoved by the sorrows of men, " careless of man- 
kind," could be nothing less than revolting to the 
men who had looked on the sorrows of life and felt 
the bitterness of suffering. Henceforth men would 
leave the gods in their drowsy contentment and 
"work out their own salvation." So said Buddha; 
but the proof that God does not so live is found in 
the inability of men who had known true thoughts 
of God to rest satisfied with Buddhism. When and 
how it was driven from India no one can say. Doubt- 
less it was with war and tumult ; but however that 
may be Buddhism is no longer found as a distinct 
religious system in India to-day. It still exists in a 
debased form in Ceylon and in the valleys of Ne- 
paul, but the banks of the Ganges ai^d the plains of 
the Deccan know it no more. 



HINDUISM. 179 

Brahmanism as it appears after Buddha's refor- 
mation is like Catholicism after the Council of Trent ; 
it is the same, and yet it has felt the influence of the 
times. In this last form, in which it still exists in 
India, Brahmanism is known as Hinduism. 

The origin of Hinduism is shrouded in mystery, 
but it is probable that it took its rise in that seeth- 
ing time of Indian thought, — the sixth century be- 
fore our era. It, too, was a protest against Brahman- 
ism, but it differed from the Buddhist movement in 
this, that while Buddhism began to walk a path 
which led to atheism, Hinduism set its face from the 
beginning towards theism. But it was the theism of 
a philosophic sort, and so in its first form had no 
attraction for the common people. The power of 
Buddhism lay in its truthfulness. It did not try to 
deceive the people. It came at a time when men 
had drunk deep of the cup of pantheism, and yet 
cried out for a living God. Then came Buddha and 
said. There is no living God : the hope of humanity 
is in itself. The living God has yet to be ; you and 
I are parts of it. Realize the possibility of your na- 
ture, and humanity will emerge from the struggle 
mighty in power. 

But the human soul w^hen it becomes conscious of 
spiritual thirst craves nothing less than the Eternal. 
To beckon men on with the promise of a God who 
is yet to be is as vain as to console them with tra- 
ditions of a God that has been. The first was the 
error of Buddhism, the second was the weakness of 
Hinduism, in its first stage, during the lifetime of 
Buddha or his immediate disciples. We have seen 



180 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

A 

that the Atman, or one soul of the universe, was often 
spoken of in Brahmanism as Brahma, or spirit. It 
was that name on which Hinduism fastened, but in- 
stead of using the neuter form the masculine was 
substituted, and the people were called to the wor- 
ship of Brahma the Creator. 

The call met with but slight response. A few 
philosophers who had felt the insufficiency of pan- 
theism, but who shrank from the atheism which 
seemed to be supplanting it, — who perhaps also 
were disgusted with the "publicans and sinners" 
with whom Buddha consorted, accepted the new doc- 
trine of the personality of God. Yet, after all, it 
was but a shadowy personality at best. No one 
could think of Brahma as one who could be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, — he w^as a crea- 
tor, that was all that could be said for him. This 
was something better no doubt than the inevitable, 
irresistible law of Kamma, but it was not enough. 
In their reaction from pantheism the Hindus had 
fallen short of theism, and so remained in the fatal- 
istic atmosphere of deism. Their God could never 
be spoken of as "mighty to save." They had, so to 
speak, waked Brahma from the sleep of ages, but 
they could not bring him near to man. They had 
let slip the fundamental truth of Hindu philosophy, 
that creation is a continuous process, and witnesses 
to the presence of an immanent, living God. They 
had lost their hold on that truth, and so could only 
speak of Brahma as one who had once, by a fiat of 
his will, created all things out of the Illusion which 
like a cloud surrounded him. 



HINDUISM. 181 

It was not long before Brahma began to sink be- 
low the horizon of consciousness, as one who had ac- 
complished his work. That was a dark period in 
Indian religious life. It seemed as if the only step 
that could be taken in the direction of theism had 
failed, and that the last state was destined to be 
worse than the first. But it was not so. These phi- 
losophers had given the clew to the escape from the 
labyrinth, and the Brahmans were not slow to avail 
themselves of it. 

Hinduism, then, which began as an independent 
spontaneous movement, contemporaneous with Bud- 
dhism, and like it a revolt from Brahmanism, was 
now ta.ken possession of by the Brahmans, and de- 
liberately used as a means of checking the rising tide 
of Buddhism. It was to theism that the people 
were called, and v/hen they responded Buddhism van- 
ished from India like the morning mist, never to re- 
turn. But it was a theism much more virile than that 
of which we have just spoken. Atheism was not the 
only weakness of Buddhism ; it was weak because it 
had broken with the past. The Brahmans, who un- 
dertook to revive Brahmanism in the form of Hin- 
duism, knew the value of the continuity of thought ; 
therefore they sought for the deities of the people in 
the great storehouse of religious thought, the Vedas. 
If a person was needed to attract the wandering wor- 
shipers, the Brahmans determined that he should 
be the best. We have seen that in the Vedas four 
gods were originally the heads of the pantheon, — 
Agni, Indra, Rudra, and Varuna. 



182 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

In time Varuna, the god of the cloudless sky, gave 
place to Sarya, the sun-god, a more active deity. 
Then Indra began to be spoken of as the same as 
Eudra, so that there were but three gods left. But 
these three were but manifestation of the one ele- 
ment of fire : Agni the fire on earth, Indra-Rudra 
the lightning, and Sarya the sun. In a land where 
the greatest blessing is rain it is easy to see why 
Indra-Rudra should soon have come to be spoken of 
as supreme. It was the old Vedic god Indra-Rudra 
at once dispelling clouds and bringing rain, blasting 
with the thunderbolt and blessing with the refresh- 
ing shower, that the Brahmans called the people to 
the worship of, under the name of Shiva, the Au- 
spicious, or the Benefactor, the representative of the 
creative and destructive forces of nature. 

But there was need of more than a name to satisfy 
people who had known the influence of the search- 
ing skepticism of Buddhism. There was need of a 
philosophy, which would answer the intellectual crav- 
ings of the thoughtful. That, too, was found in the 
past. We have seen that the great monument of 
the thought of the Brahmanic age was the Maha- 
Bharata. In its first form it had been no doubt noth- 
ing more than a great epic, describing the war be- 
tween two branches of the great Bharata family. But 
it had been added to again and again, until it had 
lost its original character, and was now a great mass 
of legends, romances, hymns, and philosophical trea- 
tises. At what time that part of the Maha-Bharata 
known as the Bhagavadgita, or Gita, — the song 
sung by the deity, — was written, we need not here 



HINDUISM. 183 

discuss. When it is known that the critics differ to 
the extent of assigning it to dates eight hundred 
years apart, it will be seen how impossible it will be 
for any one to speak with confidence on the subject. 
The point which interests us, however, in this con- 
nection is, that no matter when the Gita was writ- 
ten, it became the philosophical expression of Hin- 
duism, and has so remained to this day. There is a 
most admirable analysis of this work in Cousin's 
" History of Modern Philosophy," but the poem itself 
has been translated into English, so that it may be 
read of all ; therefore it will only be necessary to 
call attention to one or two points in it which may 
serve to make clear this part of our subject. 

On the morning of the decisive battle between the 
two rival houses, when the armies are drawn up in 
hostile array, the heart of Arjuna, fails him, as he 
sees his kindred whom he is called upon to destroy. 
In this dilemma he appeals to the god, who incites 
him to war by pointing out that he cannot kill his 
relatives, for " there is no existence for that which 
is unreal : there is no non-existence for that which is 
real. And the correct conclusion about both is per- 
ceived by those who perceive the truth. Know That 
to be indestructible which pervades all this ; the de- 
struction of that indestructible Principle nojie can 
bring about. These bodies appertaining to the em- 
bodied Self, which is eternal, indestructible, and in- 
definable, are said to be perishable ; therefore do en- 
gage in battle, O descendant of Bharata ! He who 
thinks It to be the killer, and he who thinks It to be 
killed, both know nothing. It kills not, is not killed. 



184 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

. . . Unborn, everlasting, unchangeable, and prime- 
val, It is not killed when the body is killed." ^ 

It is easy to see what this mysticism would lead 
to. It could only end in Antinomianism. The ex- 
ternal is nothing. The internal is everything. The 
letter does not kill ; the letter has no existence. 
Therefore, it is of no consequence what the acts of 
life are, the only thing to consider is the condition 
of the spirit ! In the Puranas and Tantras, which 
are the fuller expression of Hindu thought, this 
theory is carried to its most desperate conclusion. 
There is something dreadful in this phase of Indian 
thought. It shrinks from no conclusion. It never 
seems to occur to an Indian philosopher that a con- 
clusion which contradicts the fundamental instincts 
of humanity indicates a fallacy. Buddha had glori- 
fied knowledge and works, and Hinduism answers, 
salvation is only by faith and love. 

This principle was, however, as much opposed to 
Brahmanism as to Buddhism. Buddhism was the 
moral expression of the Brahmanical doctrine of 
Kamma, or ceremonial. If moral acts were indif- 
ferent, much more ceremonial. It was here that 
Hinduism parted with Brahmanism, and, disregard- 
ing the sacredness of the priests, became a demo- 
cratic movement. 

When we consider its treatment of the necessity 
of '^ love " as well as '' faith " we are brought to more 
dreadful conclusions. Love requires an object. This 
was found in Shiva, the Auspicious. He created and 

^ The Bhagavadgita, Sacred Books of the East, vol. viii. pp. 
44,45. 



HINDUISM. 185 

he destroyed. The cycle of birth and life, of de- 
struction and recreation, which, as we have seen, was 
the burden of Buddha's preaching, which he declared 
was the inevitable law to which all life must submit, 
which led and could lead only to suffering, the wor- 
shipers of Shiva declared was not the effect of an im- 
personal law, but the work of a personal god. Birth 
and death, the disintegration and assimilation of 
matter, in heaven above and the earth beneath and 
the water under the earth, are all his work, and the 
result is not sorrow but an eternal joy. He is the 
Auspicious, he is continually bringing good out of 
evil. That was a noble faith, more like the rugged 
theism of Israel than anything we have yet found. 
But they seemed unable to live by that faith. 

The worshipers of Shiva committed the sin of Re- 
hoboam the son of Nebat, and attempted to make 
sensuous a faith which must ever rest on the contact 
of the spirit of man with the Eternal. All attempts 
to realize the generative power of God have ended 
in the grossest idolatry. We know what came of it 
in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Israel. It was the same 
in India. The temples were soon filled with images 
of bulls, the fittest emblems of generative power. 
Finally the bazaars of India were filled with the im- 
ages of the genital organs as the likeness of their 
god, and Indian philosophy, which had begun in the 
purest idealism, ended in the grossest materialism. 

It might be possible for a powerful being who 
brought good out of evil to command the faith, but 
hardly the love of his creatures, and therefore Shiva 
was soon spoken of as a being capable of love and 



186 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

as having a consort. No doubt the intention here, 
as in the worship of the Linga, was pure. The 
Hindu mind had not forgotten its old dream of 
Yoga, union with the divine ; and there seems to be 
no doubt that all that was intended by this worship 
was to typify the union of the soul with God. This 
thought had been the burden of the prophecy of 
Hosea, and had been heard again and again in the 
great and holy words of the prophets of Israel. But 
it is one thing to speak of the soul as the " Bride of 
Christ;" to say, "as the bridegroom rejoices over the 
bride, so the Lord thy God rejoiceth over thee ; " and 
quite another to attempt to represent that union by 
any visible sign. Shaivism ended, as modern realism 
must end, in debauchery and shame. 

It is true an effort was made to check this descent, 
and Shiva was, by an act of sublime inconsistency, 
preached as the ascetic representative of Buddha. 
But the spirit of sensualism having been evoked in 
the name of religion could not be so easily laid, and 
Shaivism descended to its lowest depth in the dis- 
ciples of " the left hand," as they are called, whose 
delirious frenzy, the result of the orgies which are to 
them the highest worship of which man is capable, 
is such as could not be described in any book. 

There are still to be found in India many who 
have always held to the idealistic interpretation of 
Shaivism, and who, indeed, utterly repudiate sensual- 
ism as in any sense the result of its teachings. 

There is one other point in Shaivism to which at- 
tention should be called, and that is its doctrine of a 
future state. The soul that has attained to Yoga will 



HINDUISM. 187 

not at death be absorbed into Sbiva, but will enjoy 
the communion with the Auspicious One which has 
been so inadequately symbolized by the images. It 
seems at first strange that such a doctrine should 
have been proclaimed so soon after Buddha's preach- 
ing of Nirvana ; but it was more than a revolt from 
the cold comfort of Buddhism. Buddha, with all his 
efforts to discourage the " delusion of personality," 
had done more than perhaps any man in Indian his- 
tory to manifest the glory and the power of person- 
ality ; so that it came to pass finally that the way of 
salvation was felt to lie through faith in the more 
than human personality of the great teacher. It was 
here that Shaivism found a point of contact with Bud- 
dhism. 

" By love and faith," it said, " you can cultivate a 
personality which, throughout all time, will find a 
joy in communion with the divine life which the 
keenest ecstasy of which the body of man is capable 
will but faintly typify. We have seen how soon the 
worshipers of Shiva fell from the ideal, and became 
debased by the adoration of the image ; but it would 
be doing a gross injustice to our brethren of the one 
great family if we did not endeavor to appreciate as 
far as possible the religious significance of that from 
which we at first sight instinctively recoil. 

What, then, is the outlook for Shaivism ? There 
can be no doubt that its days are numbered ; for 
while, as we have seen, it was not without good, yet 
it has failed to answer the needs of the human heart 
to which it seemed at first to respond. 

It began with a message of hope. Men are not 



188 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the atoms on which a relentless law grinds without a 
purpose. Men are the subjects of a king who kills 
that he may make alive again. But that hope was de- 
lusive. It is as fatalistic as Mahometanism, and will 
succumb to Mahometanism if it be not gathered into 
a larger truth. And the reason is this : with all its 
promise of theism, and its revelation of the relation of 
the soul to the Eternal, Shaivism had not freed itself 
from the dualism which was always latent in the pan- 
theism of Brahmanism. The union of the god Shiva 
and his consort is only the old Brahmanic dream of 
the union of Brahma and Prakiti, the issue of which 
had been the material universe. Now dualism seems 
to lead the mind to a satisfying conclusion, because 
it fastens attention on the opposing effects evident in 
the world — good and evil, while keeping the cause 
out of sight. The doctrine of the unity of God 
doubtless leads to results which are perplexing, but 
the history of humanity shows that peace is found 
in resting upon an inscrutable mystery, rather than 
upon a solution which seems to be what the human 
mind requires, but is gained by the violation of a 
fundamental instinct. 

What now, it maybe asked, is left for the religion 
which would convert the Shaivist, but the repudiation 
of it ? Certainly we have so far met with no religion 
which would be so likely to justify that method ; and 
yet anything which has ever called forth the reli- 
gious instinct in the heart of man must have that 
within it on which the religion of Christ can fasten, 
and rising from which can show the fulfillment of a 
dream which has apparently violated every religious 
instinct. 



HINDUISM. 189 

Can the religion of Jesus have anything in com- 
mon with modern Shaivism, so associated in our minds 
with Sati and blood-stained idols and the creaking 
car of Juggernaut ? Yes, for Shaivism, in aU its 
degradation, was a noble effort to find a via media 
between the humanitarianism of Buddha and his 
inevitable law of decay, and Brahmanic pantheism. 
The divine essence, said Shaivism, is a person ; he has 
a body like us, and you poor people can come near 
to him. You have your place in the great religion 
of which your fathers sung in the Vedic hymns. 
Think of the old god Indra-Rudra as Shiva your ben- 
efactor. This law of decay, to which Buddha says 
we must submit, is the expression of Shiva's will. He 
kills and he makes alive. One power is the source 
of both. Shaivism was the first step back toward a 
pure theism, and therefore toward Christianity. The 
Shaivas did for India what Mahomet did for Arabia : 
taught the people to think of themselves as subjects 
of a divine king ; and incomplete as it may seem to 
us, it is the beginning of strength, for it calls forth 
faith in an all-wise, the details of whose government 
must be wise too. " Let me," cried the great Hebrew 
king, " let me fall into the hand of God and not into 
the hand of man ; " and the Christian in his hour of 
greatest agony bows the head and says, " The Lord 
gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the 
name of the Lord." That faith strikes its root into 
Shaivism, but lifts its head above it. Christianity, 
with its new knowledge of nature, knows that there 
is no decay save for better growth. Shaivism rests 
on the faith that good will come out of evil. Its 



190 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

justification is in the beneficence of nature, which 
kills to make alive. Christianity, with its new knowl- 
edge of nature, knows far better than Shaivism that 
there is no decay save for better growth, but it finds 
the real justification of its faith in'the life of Jesus. 
His death and coming to life again have done more 
than reveal a law : they have revealed the divine will 
toward man. " He that spared not his own Son, but 
delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with 
him also freely give us all things ? " This man has 
been declared to be the Son of God with power, by 
the resurrection from the dead, therefore the disin- 
tegration of soul and body in the service of the living 
God is the pathway to eternal life. That is the mes- 
sage to Shaivism. 

Into that second great article of the faith of 
Shaivism, Christianity can enter with a profound 
s;/mpathy. It too places faith and love above all 
things. But it is saved from the degradation which 
has so often resulted from that faith by the revela- 
tion of one in whom the conflict between faitb and 
works is harmonized. Jesus reveals himself as one 
whose very existence is dependent upon faith in his 
father. He is the Lamb of God, who waits upon the 
Shepherd of his soul ; but this faith and love are 
manifesting themselves ceaselessly in doing the will 
of the Father. That v/as his ''meat and drink." 
Ever to have missed doing that will which was re- 
vealed hy faith would have been to sever that faith. 
" Works without faith are dead," but the faith that 
does not show itself by its works is dead also. That 
is a truism in the religion of Jesus, but it would be 
good news in India. 



HINDUISM. 191 

The revolt from Brahmanism to the veneration o£ 
Brahma and the worship of Shiva having been suc- 
cessful, it was inevitable that others should follow. 
So true has this been that Hinduism has been de- 
fined as the religion of Sects.^ There are now ten 
of these to be found in India, but we shall consider 
but one more, and that the great rival of Shaivism, 
called Vaishnuism, or the worship of the god Vishnu. 

The name Vishnu also is found in the Vedas, but 
he plays no such part as the god Shiva, under the 
form of Indra-Rudra. 

Vaishnuism arose like its rival out of the religious 
conditions produced by Buddhism, and it was an 
attempt to satisfy the demand which arose, on the 
death of Buddha, for sympathy and love. Shaivism 
had attempted to recall the people to theism by pre- 
senting a scheme of theology which would satisfy 
their intellectual needs. It set forth a theology of 
''faith and love" as opposed to "knowledge and 
v/orks." The result was the same as followed on 
the preaching of Brahma as the creator, — it at- 
tracted only the philosopher. Shaivism became a 
popular movement only when it became corrupt. 
Vaishnuism avoided that mistake, and began, not 
with theology, but with the preaching of one who 
was more truly the friend of man than even the 
loving Buddha, — one who had manifested his love 
again and again in order to save his people from 
their sins. There was little enough of this thought 
in the Vedas, and so the leaders of Vaishnuism went 
there only for a name. It was the Maha-Bharata to 

1 Religions of India, by A. Barth. 



192 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

which they turned their attention ; and under the 
skillful manipulation to which it was then subjected 
the great epic became the gospel of Vaishnuism. 
The god who gave the victory to men, the god who 
instructed the hero in wisdom, was none other than 
Vishnu, the Pervader, who, under the form of Krish- 
na, had descended to earth, not for the first time, that 
good might prevail over evil. But there was another 
epic on which they laid their hands with a like result. 
The Eamayana had been originally the story of the 
abduction of Sita, wife of Eama, by the king of 
Ceylon. This tradition was to the Indian minstrels 
what the rape of Helen had been to the poets of 
Greece. It became a mighty poem, sung at every 
durbar and recited in every village. On this the 
worshipers of Vishnu now fastened, and the hero 
Eama, whose goodness and prowess had been the 
delight of children for generations, was now used 
as a mighty engine for the propagation of the new 
faith. Eama, like Krishna, was a manifestation of 
the incarnate Vishnu. We may imagine what an 
effect a story with all the charm of the Iliad might 
have upon the imagination of a nation when into 
it was infused the religious power of the Pilgrim's 
Progress. Yet that was the transformation effected 
upon the Eamayana. We can easily understand, 
therefore, how it might come to pass that, as Pro- 
fessor Monier Williams says, " Vaishnuism, notwith- 
standing the gross polytheistic superstitions and 
hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only 
real religion of the Hindu peoples." ^ 

1 Religious Life and Thought in India. 



HINDUISM. 193 

One secret of Its success no doubt is to be ascribed 
to its elasticity. And this was due to that funda- 
mental conception of the incarnation which is ex- 
pressed in the Gita by the Deity. " Whensoever, 
O descendant of Bharata, piety languishes, and im- 
piety is in the ascendant, I create myself. I am 
born age after age, for the protection of the good, 
for the destruction of evil-doers, and the establish- 
ment of piety." ^ 

We see what an advantage this gave over other 
systems. Whatever the people loved could be 
claimed without inconsistency as a manifestation of 
Vishnu ! Is Buddha praised ? The accommodating 
priest declares that he is an incarnation of Vishnu. 
Is Christ preached ? All that is asserted of Him is 
accepted — only He is an incarnation of Vishnu ! 

Here, then, are two aspects in which Vaishnuism 
claimed, and claimed justly, the allegiance of the 
people. First, there was no good which was not the 
work of Vishnu. Vaishnuism is as intolerant of a 
rival as Christianity itself. Secondly, these manifes- 
tations of Vishnu are not mere exhibitions of power, 
they are manifestations of love. They would say 
with St. John, " For this cause was the Son of God 
manifested, that he might destroy the works of the 
devil." But Vaishnuism went a step farther. It 
could not, after the preaching of Buddha, ignore the 
past. Rama, Krishna, Buddha, were historical man- 
ifestations of Vishnu ; there is one more to come at 
the end of time. But if we look back we shall never 
find a time when Vishnu was not "making for 

^ Bhagavadgita, p. 79. 
13 



194 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

righteousness." First he was incarnated in a fish ; 
secondly in a tortoise; thirdly in a boar; fourthly 
in a man lion ; and then in a dwarf. 

There is something more here, I think, than sim- 
ple stretching back by thought into the past. There 
is a sequence in these manifestations : beginning with 
the lowest form of sentient life, it mounts to the 
beast of the field ; then to the half man, half brute ; 
then to the manikin i then to the hero ; and at last 
to the saint.^ 

Here I think we may discern a feeling after that 
great truth of the gradual revelation of the divine 
life which St. John so emphasizes, and w^hich the 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews announces with 
so much power. " God having of old time spoken 
unto the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions, 
and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days 
spoken unto us by a Son, — the effulgence of his 
glory, and the very image of his substance." ^ 

Yet with all this promise Vaishnuism has sunk 
lower than any form of Indian religion. Some of 
the worshipers of Shiva have retained their purity, 
but Vaishnuism has gone down as a system. We 
need not here trace its mournful history, all the 
more sad because it gave the best promise of re- 
deeming India. It had something worse than the 
Antinomianism of Shaivism at its heart. It was 
bad enough to say that the acts of men were indif- 
ferent to God as long as there was faith, for faith 
even in its lowest form implies some sort of spirit- 
ual activity ; but Vaishnuism lays so much stress on 

^ Compare Indian Wisdom, p. 336. ^ Heb. i. 1, R. V. 



HINDUISM. 195 

the last thought of life that an incantation at the 
end of life will go far to counteract the evil effect 
of a character which has become ingrained. In the 
Gita we read, " He who leaves this body and departs 
from this world remembering me in his last mo- 
ments comes into my essence." ^ This led also to 
the belief in the efficacy of rites and ceremonies, pil- 
grimages and relics. Multitudes may be seen to-day 
gathered about the well of Vishnu at Benares, in 
which all sins can be washed away. This belief 
in the power of a ceremonial absolution has pro- 
duced the same immoral results in India that the 
indulgences of Catholicism produced before the Ref- 
ormation. 

Thus Vaishnuism not only proved itself popular 
with the common people, but it was able to hold its 
own in controversy by denying the eternity of Shiva. 
Vishnu, it was said, is the only true God. Shiva 
has no existence apart from the body in which he 
now dwells ; when that decays Shiva will be no more. 
Not so Vishnu ; he has an existence which is eternal. 
He is the Pervader. He is independent of all form, 
and yet has the power and the will to assume many. 
Thus we see that that doctrine of an incarnation 
which seemed to be the most inconsistent with the 
fundamental conception of Indian philosophy has 
really fallen heir to the powerful doctrine of trans- 
migration, which has underlain every phase of Hindu 
theology. 

^ Bhagavadgita, p. Y8. It is true that it is also stated that one 
will naturally tliink at the last of what he has habitually pondered 
on, but there is no intimation that the past will avail if the mem- 
ory fails. 



196 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Has Vaislmuism, it may be asked, then anticipated 
the doctrine of the incarnation ? Williams, in the 
work before alluded to, tells us that " the Sanskrit 
language has no exact equivalent for ' incarnation ; ' 
the common word is Avatara, and means ' descent.' 
Furthermore it must be borne in mind that inter- 
vening between the Supreme Being and these Ava- 
taras there must be placed personal deities, such as 
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, therefore the so-called 
incarnations ought to be regarded as incarnations of 
incarnations." It is important that this fact should 
be borne in mind, because no popular objection is 
more frequently urged against Christian theology 
than that it has borrowed its fundamental doc- 
trine from India. It was originally urged, I believe 
by French writers, in the very dawn of the science 
of comparative religions, but it has reappeared in 
our own day. 

The Indian belief in Avatara is a belief in a 
descent, temporary, and to effect a definite object. 
Again, it is a mere emanation, a belief against which 
the Christian consciousness has protested from the 
first formulation of a creed till to-day. That there 
is a sense in which the Christian incarnation may 
be spoken of as a ''descent," I suppose no one who 
believes in it at all will deny. St. Paul, in a highly 
poetical passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, so 
speaks of it ; but throughout the Gospels generally, 
and above all, in the proem to the Fourth Gospel, the 
incarnation is spoken of as a revelation or unveiling 
of the divine reason which had been in the Kosmos 
and in humanity from the " beginning." In Jesus 



HINDUISM. 197 

the scattered rays of the light which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world were concentrated. 
In Him the syllables of the Logos were combined to 
form the word which is the name of God and man, 
— the divine character in humanity. 

Until that fundamental distinction between the 
Indian Avatara and the Christian Incarnation is ap- 
preciated, I do not believe we can expect any result 
from Christian missions among the Vaishnavas. 

If we are only deists who believe that God once 
descended into a human form, and that the proof 
thereof is to be found in the miracles of Jesus, 
then, I believe that the worshipers of Vishnu will 
conquer. They too believe in that sort of incarna- 
tion, and stand ready to prove it by miracles, com- 
pared with which the gracious signs which Jesus 
gave, if viewed as works of wonder only, are beneath 
contempt. Did not Krishna lift a whole mountain 
range on his finger ? On what, then, it may be asked, 
are we to trust as evidences of the Divine origin of 
Christianity, if not on the physical miracles which 
served for proof so long ? The Christian answer to 
the human need, — that answering of deep to deep 
is the best witness to the presence of one who " sitteth 
above the water floods and remaineth a king forever." 

Yet, no one can glance at the teachings of Vaish- 
nuism without feeling that in its doctrine of Avata- 
ras it was prophesying to that incarnation which 
should be a revelation, not that God had once come 
to man, but that humanity's name is Emmanuel ; that 
never since man first felt the breath of the Divine 
life that lifted him above the beasts of the field had 



198 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

God left him. The message of Christianity to Vaish- 
nuism is not, " You have committed sin in your hero- 
worship of Kama and Ki»ishna," but, "Your sin be- 
gan when you left the teachings of the Yedic hymns 
and the Upanishads, which would have led you to rec- 
ognize the divinity of man, and saved you from the 
animal worship which is the shame of India to-day." 

It is here that the religion of Christ must find its 
point of contact with Vaishnuism. Its false concep- 
tion of the relation of the divine to the human was 
brought with it out of the degradation into which 
Brahmanism had sunk at the last. The fundamental 
idea of the deity was to them power; the funda- 
mental idea of humanity was nonentity ; therefore an 
" incarnation " could be nothing but an Avatara, a 
descent of divine power into human weakness. The 
consequence was that man gained no revelation of 
the character either of God or of man by any such 
descent. But the Christian doctrine of the incar- 
nation says, There is a revelation first of human 
nature, because the light of the world illuminates it ; 
and, secondly, a revelation of the Divine character 
by convincing men that it is essentially human. 
Now the reason why neither Greece nor India had 
any true conception of the character of the Divine 
was that they had no true conception of what was 
essentially human. They both identified humanity 
with what St. Paul calls the " Old Adam," the 
natural man. The consequence was, that in Greece 
there was found the apotheosis of vice. There was 
nothing that men saw in the lives of one another 



HINDUISM. 199 

that was not ascribed to tlie gods. In India there 
was felt to be no incongruity in the appearance of 
Vishnu in the vilest woman or the bloodthirstiest 
man, and that shame was the natural outcome of its 
faith. For religion must in some way realize its 
faith in the possibility of the union between God 
and man. Brahmanism only succeeded in enunciat- 
ing a theory which destroyed humanity. Buddhism 
followed with a doctrine which dispensed with God. 
Vaishnuism preached Avataras, which had no con- 
nection with morality. A god who appears in a 
hero, an animal, or a saint indifferently, cannot 
forever command the worship of man. That is the 
reason of the debaucheries of Vaishnuism. It is to 
that that modern Vaishnuism has sunk. The hero- 
worship which began with Krishna and Rama has 
descended to the worship of brigands ; and the wor- 
ship of Vishnu's consort came, at last, to the honor- 
ing of public prostitutes as high-priestesses. 

This doctrine of the Avatara has its reflection in 
the doctrine of metempsychosis, and, as a saint may 
have passed into a serpent, the serpent, the ape, 
and the cow, and every creeping thing, is in turn 
adored by a people intoxicated with the draught of 
pantheism, and debauched by the spectacle of un- 
bridled license in a land of lust. 

Yet it is here, if anywhere, that the Gospel must 
speak to the hearts of the people. The incarnation 
may be preached here as in Greece, not as the de- 
scent of divine power, but as the unveiling of the 
image of God and revealing at once the character of 
God and man. To the Greek it showed that the be- 
lief of mankind that God is human, whatever else 



200 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

He may be, is true. But it showed that by hu- 
manity was meant that sinless Son in whom the 
Father is well pleased. It must begin at the other 
end in India ; it must reveal the Humanity which is 
worthy to be called the Son of God. The revela- 
tion of the Son of God as the Son of Man was the 
justification of the faith of the Greek. The reve- 
lation of the Son of Man as the Son of God will be 
the justification of the faith of the Hindu, because 
the Hindu has never believed that man could have 
any being apart from God. This must be the point 
of contact ; how much remains then to be done the 
scope of this book does not permit me to say. 

It would be interesting to see how far modern In- 
dia has been affected by the influx of other ethnic 
religions, by the invasion of Alexander, the Mon- 
golian inroads, and the conquest of Akbar, but that 
must be left. The rise of the theistic movement 
will be spoken of later ; it is undoubtedly not the 
least of the effects produced by the preaching of the 
gospel of the Son of Man. 

It cannot, however, be too often repeated that we 
must not judge of Indian religious thought by what 
appears now in the idolatrous worship of modern 
India. It is the dregs which we see in the cup now, 
but there has been rich wine there in the days of 
old ; and he who would rouse a people to better 
things must not begin by scorning their degradation ; 
he must remind them of a great and glorious past, 
the promise of a nobler future, when they shall see 
" the fellowship of the mystery which from the be- 
ginning of the world hath been hid in God." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ZOROASTRIANISM. 

The student of Zoroastrianism is tempted to doubt 
the existence of any law of spiritual conservation. 
If there be such a law it must be universal in its ap- 
plication, and yet it would seem to have failed here. 
Zoroastrianism was undoubtedly once a great moral 
power in the religious history of the world, but it has 
been well said that " No other great belief in the 
world ever left such poor and meagre monuments of 
its past splendor." Nevertheless, an examination of 
the history of the Medes and Persians will show con- 
clusively that there is a law that " changeth not," — 
the law that not an atom of truth is lost in the great 
march of humanity. A nation or an individual may 
fail, but the truth which it had in keeping is gath- 
ered up by some other nation or individual and made 
more truly than before the property of humanity. 

The present representatives of Zoroastrianism are, 
as we know, the Parsis, a " feeble folk," scattered 
from Bombay to Hong Kong; a few of them are still 
found in Persia, but they are fast dwindling away. 
So that it may be said that the Parsis are only found 
as a religious organization in Bombay, whither their 
fathers fled on the fall of the Persian empire under 
the mighty blows of the Moslem. 



202 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

For a long time it was doubtful to what branch of 
the human family these people belonged. The cast 
of countenance is not unlike the Semitic type, and on 
the discovery of the Zend-Avesta by Anquetil-Duper- 
ron in 1754, it was believed to be largely composed 
of Arabic words. But such is not the case. We 
know now that the Parsis are a part of the great 
Indo-European, stock, and that their religion sprung 
from the same root as Vedaism ; so that they have a 
claim to a place among the religions of India. 

It is a strange fate which has brought them to 
India. Their fathers utterly refused to go through 
the mountain passes into the Punjab ; and yet cen- 
turies later their children came to India by way of 
the sea. They fled from Persia to escape the rule of 
Mahomet, only to see their brethren conquer north- 
ern India as the disciples of the Prophet. I can- 
not think that this is chance. They are evidently a 
people waiting for something. They still cling to 
certain ancient ceremonies ; they may be seen in the 
early morning standing on the sea-shore bowing in 
reverence to greet the rising sun ; they still expose 
their dead on high towers that the earth may not be 
polluted by the corrupting flesh, but that it may be 
torn away by the birds of prey ; but the great phi- 
losophy which lay back of their rites they have for- 
gotten or discarded ; they are now a people scrupu- 
lously moral and devotedly monotheistic, not ready 
to die, and yet without vitality to proselyte. 

The Bible of the Parsis is popularly known as the 
Zend-Avesta, but Oriental scholars tell us that we 
should call it the A vesta, Zend, and Pazend, and that 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 203 

its reputed author should be called Spitama Zara- 
thustra ; but we will content ourselves with the 
popular terms. 

If we open the Zend-Avesta at the first Fargard 
or hymn, we read : — 

Ahura-Mazda spake to the holy Zarathustra. 

I created, O holy Zarathustra, a place, a creation of 
delight, but nowhere was created a possibility of ap- 
proach. 

For had I not, O holy Zarathustra, created a place, a 
creation of delight, where nowhere was created a possi- 
bility of approach, 

The whole corporeal world would have gone after 
Airyana-vaeja, i, e., this paradise. . . . 

The first and best of regions and places have I created, 
I who am Ahura-Mazda : 

The Airyana-vaeja of the good creation. 

The Airva Maineyus, who is full of death, created an 
opposition to the same : 

A great Serpent and Winter, which the Daevas have 
created. 

Ten winter months are there, two summer months. 

And these are cold as to the water, cold as to the earth, 
cold as to the trees. 

After this to the middle of the earth, then to the heart 
of the earth, 

Comes the winter ; then comes the most evU.-'^ 

In this hymn Mr. John Fiske ^ finds the record 
of a tradition of one of the glacial periods which 
changed Siberia to a land of snow. Dr. James 
Freeman Clarke ^ also thinks that it is the record 

^ F. Spieg'el, Eng. trans. 

2 Excursions of an Evolutionist. 

^ Ten Great Religions. 



204 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

of the migration of the Aryan family from north to 
south. Professor Max Muller,^ however, declares that 
it is altogether mythical ; an imaginary account of 
an imaginary creation. It would seem, then, as if as 
yet we could affirm nothing definitely concerning the 
cradle of the Aryan family. But as we read on in 
the Zend-Avesta we come to names which we have 
already met under a slightly different form in the 
Vedas. The word " Ahura," the name for divinity 
in the Avesta, we have found as Asura in the Vedas. 
Again, the common name for the gods, ''Daevas," 
is the same in the sacred books of both. Only this 
is to be noted, the word Asura in the earliest Vedic 
hymns had a good sense, but in the later hymns 
the Asuras are the enemies of the gods. But in 
the Avesta, Ahura is always a title of the highest 
honor. 

The word Daevas or Devas^ which has descended 
to our own day as ^ci;?, Deus, Dieu, Tins in its Teu- 
tonic form, whence our Tuesday, Dios in Portuguese, 
whence the pigeon-English josh-house, this word, on 
which the religious history of the Aryan peoples 
might be engraved, came in the Avesta to mean de- 
mons or devils. And lastly the chief god of the 
early Vedic hymns, Indra, figures as one of the chief 
devils in the Iranian mythology. 

One of the few names for the divine which they 
have in common is Soma or Haoma, for though this 
is a plant the leaves of which the acolyte pounded 
in India and Persia alike, and the juice of which the 
worshipers drank, yet in both mythologies it is also 

1 Chips from a German Workshop. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 205 

a god. It holds, if possible, a higher place in Zoro- 
astrianism than in Vedaism. It is with the twigs of 
the haoma (or soma) tree called Baregma in the 
hymns, that prayer and sacrifice are opened. 

How are we to account for this likeness between 
Vedaism and Zoroastrianism ? It would seem that 
originally the Iranian and the Indian branches of 
the Aryan family had dwelt together as one great 
division of the human family in its journey towards 
the ends of the earth. 

When it was, no scholar can tell us. As to where 
it was, there seems to be less doubt. 

On the high table-land of Central Asia known to 
ancient writers as Bactria or Bactriana, named on 
our latest maps "Independent Turkistan," full of 
new interest to us as the region in which are Khiva, 
Bokhara, and Merv, watered by the Oxus and north 
of the Hindu Kush mountains, the Aryan family 
seems to have halted in its march. 

Could we have looked upon our forefathers as 
they filled the valleys of the Oxus, we should have 
seen that conflict between the nomadic and the agri- 
cultural people of which, perhaps, the Semitic story 
of Cain and Abel is a spiritualized reflection. The 
answer to the prayer of the perplexed Rebecca is the 
statement of the condition of all the divisions of the 
human race, " Two nations are within thy womb, 
and two manner of people shall be separated from 
thy bowels." "The cunning hunter and the plain 
man dwelling in tents " were both at that early day 
in Bactria. 

There are two words which serve as torches to 



206 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

light up the obscurity of this time, they are Icavi 
and hava. They are from the same root, halp^ to 
celebrate ; kava is used in the Avesta, as a term of 
honor, but kavi is a despicable v/ord. This signifi- 
cance is reversed in the Vedas. The explanation 
given by Haug ^ is this. Kavi was the name of the 
priests of the united people. They were their leaders. 
They were prophets as well as priests and kings. To 
them the people went to inquire the will of the gods. 
The sacrifice was offered vfith the intoxicating soma 
juice, and when Indra was thoroughly inebriated, 
which happened only when the priests were, one 
of those marauding expeditions was begun, which 
ended in the plundering of the more peaceful Ira- 
nians who had flocks and herds. No wonder they 
came to look with horror on the kavi, no wonder In- 
dra seemed a devil. Yet the words had taken too 
deep a root in their language to be eradicated, and 
so with a slight change of form the word became the 
designation of the Iranian kings, doubtless the chief 
men who first resisted these inroads of their neigh- 
bors. They were called kava, and so we find the 
word kava in the Vedas as the designation of the 
enemies of the true faith, while kavi in the Avesta 
means the worshiper of devils ; so we see that the 
amenities of ecclesiasticism have a strong claim upon 
the devotee of antiquity. 

It was impossible that such a state of things 
should continue long. The nomadic tribes pushed 

1 Essays on the Sacred Language, etc. , of the Parsis, by Martin 
Haug. The same thing is described as happening to-day in Tartary, 
in Souvenirs cfun Voyage dans la Tartarie, par I'Abb^ Hue. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 207 

on through Cashmere or through Afghanistan until 
they stood at the entrance of the rich plain of India, 
which lay before them. Into the Punjab the Ira- 
nians seem to have come very little, if at all. They 
preferred a settled life, and began to feed their 
flocks on the alps of Bactria, and to till the valleys 
of the Oxus. Soon the schism was complete, and 
those who would come from the Aryan to the Ira- 
nian branch were required to abjure the religion of 
the Vedas. The form of that abjuration has come 
down to us. It came to mean in time the renuncia- 
tion of all evil, like our renunciation of the world, 
the flesh, and the devil, but in those early days it 
meant the leaving of one well-known form of wor- 
ship and throwing in the lot with the schismatics. 

"I cease," so said the convert, — "I cease to be a 
Deva worshiper. I profess to be a worshiper of 
Ahura-Mazda." " I forsake the Devas, the wicked, 
bad, wrongful originators of mischief, the most bane- 
ful, destructive, and basest of beings." 

Thus was made the first recorded religious schism, 
the first of that great number of protests against 
wickedness which some may think is sufficiently ex- 
plained by saying that it was a mere question of 
occupation; just as some historians think that the 
Protestant Reformation is explained by saying the 
monk Luther wanted a wife, or that the American 
Revolution was caused by the unwillingness of the 
colonists to pay a slight tax on tea. But the student 
of history will not rest satisfied with an explanation 
which confounds the occasion with the cause. 

What the cause of this first schism was, what was 



208 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the fundamental conception of the divine, which dif- 
ferentiated the Iranian from the Vedic religion, it 
will be the object of this chapter to trace. 

But before we do that it will be well to remember 
the moral value of a protest. It is often said, and 
more often repeated, that Protestantism is essentially 
a negative thing, whereas, in fact, it is of all things 
the most positive of which the human mind is capa- 
ble. For what is a protest but the assertion of in- 
dividuality ? The positive action of truth upon the 
soul of man as opposed to the negative acquiescence 
in wrong because of lack of spiritual vitality ? As 
well say that the man who lifts a fallen tree out of 
the path of a band of pilgrims is doing a negative 
thing because he is resisting the power of gravita- 
tion, as to say that the man who, in the power of his 
individual righteousness, resists evil in opposition to 
the dead weight of thoughtless acquiescence, is nega- 
tive in his deed ! This, then, is the glory of Zoroas- 
trianism, that it was the first sign of the individual 
in religion.^ Now individualism is in spiritual as 
in material things the first step toward personality. 
The child must through the sense of pain learn that 
it differs from the things around it, before it can 
rise to the full glory of its manhood ; and so in re- 
ligion the soul must recognize the fact that it per- 
sonally is responsible for wrong, and that its first 
duty is to separate itself from evil, before it can 
come to the measure of the fullness of the stature of 
Christ. 

^ See Oriental Religions^ — Persia, by Samuel Johnson. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 209 

We have seen that it was the failure of the Hindu 
mind to realize its own personality in the conscious- 
ness of a relation to a divine person, which led 
to the immorality and failure of Indian religious 
thought. But as personality must begin with in- 
dividuality, so individuality must begin with the 
moral apprehension of responsibility, before it can 
pass into the true personality of the spirit of Son- 
ship. Now the first downward step of Indian theo- 
logy was taken in Bactria, and the glory of Zo- 
roastrianism began to dawn in that day when the 
forefathers of Luther, and Latimer, and Knox, and 
Cromwell, and Wesley refused to believe the ortho- 
doxy of the day, that the divine life could be pleased 
with the drunken orgies of the kavi. 

Undoubtedly individualism has its dangers, one 
of which is to make any cooperation impossible ; but 
that is what Protestantism seeks, — the uniting of 
the scattered individuals under the leadership of a 
strong personality for the furtherance of the truth, 
which conflict has made more precious than ever. 
Iranian Protestantism obeyed this law, and found in 
Zoroaster a leader fitted for the great work of the 
Iranian branch of the Aryan people. 

Strange to say, the life of the reputed author of 
Zoroastrianism is shrouded in greater mystery than 
the early history of the religion itself. His very 
name, which in its Latin form of Zoroaster is so 
well known to us, has taxed the ingenuity of crit- 
ical scholars. Zarathustra means, according to one 
commentator, " devoted to agriculture," but another 

14 



210 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

affirms that it means " the golden one," " the color 
of fire." " He came into the world," says a tradi- 
tion, " not like all the other sons of men with a cry, 
but laughing." Biblical commentators, not content 
with the glory which is in the Bible, but more ortho- 
dox than the prophets, and jealous of any truth not 
recorded in the sacred records of Israel, have found 
in the life of Zoroaster a Persian version of Shem 
the son of Noah, of Moses, and of Daniel. Indeed, 
where so little is known, it is safe to assert almost 
anything, and lay the burden of proof on the ob- 
jector. 

In such a matter as this we cannot do better than 
rest upon the opinion of that authority which seems 
to be the highest. I suppose there is no higher au- 
thority than that of Professor Haug, whose essays on 
the Parsis form a part of Triibner's Oriental Series. 
It is the opinion of Professor Haug that the word 
Zarathustra means " most excellent." But we may 
add that amongst a people avowedly devoted to agri- 
culture it is not strange that he should be called Za- 
rathustra who excelled in the national occupation; 
and that in a religion the highest rite of which was 
celebrated with fire, the " fire colored " would be 
deemed an appropriate name for him whom they 
venerated as the founder of their cult. But our 
author declares that this title was originally given 
to all the priests of the Iranians after their separa- 
tion from the Indian Aryans, and that the family 
name of that Zarathustrian who was the father of 
the faithful was Spitama. 

He must have lived at a very early date. Cer- 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 211 

tainly as early as Moses, probably before, for while 
the Bactrian revolt against Vedaism was little more 
than a protest against certain evils in the established 
system, this prophet appeared and saved the nation 
from sinking into nature worship, and called on 
them to lift up their eyes to the eternal.^ The 
earliest of the hymns of the A vesta represent him as 
talking with God face to face. He stands in Iranian 
history like Abraham in Semitic, as the "friend of 
God." In the uncritical period of the science of 
comparative religions, Zoroaster was supposed to 
have been the author of the whole of the Zend- 
Avesta, but scholars now tell us that the hymns 
which compose this book are of various dates, though 
the spirit of Zoroaster inspires them all. 

The full title of the Zend-Avesta, once the source 
of inspiration of the whole of the great Iranian peo- 
ple, is " Avesta," and Zend, and Pazend, — that is 
the Avesta is the ancient text written in Bactrian, 
and the Zend the commentary on that text written 
in Pahlavi or ancient Persian, and Pazend a further 
explanation written in Parsi. 

The Avesta and the Zend took their present 
form, no doubt, amid the horror and confusion which 
followed the overthrow of the great Sassanian dy- 
nasty, when in the midst of the national degradation 
the priests alone had the wisdom to save the chief 
treasure of the people, and so justify in the eyes of 
posterity their national existence. 

In trying to reach the sanctum sanctorum of Zo- 

1 Bunseu's God in History. 



212 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

roastrianism we will do well to seek an entrance 
through the ceremonies which are described in the 
Avesta. Now, if we will recall the contemporaneous 
rites amongst the Indian Aryans, we shall see that 
an advance in the spiritual conception of the divine 
was made by the Iranians. In the Vedas we saw 
that Agni, the god of fire, was implored to mount on 
high and bring down the gods to participate in the 
sacrificial banquet. But here we find no material 
bond between the worshiper and the divine being. 

*^ Here with Zaotra and Bare9ma (i. 6., with 
holy water and the bundle of sacred twigs), I wish 
hither with praise the lords of the heavenly, the 
lords of the earthly, the lords of the water-animals, 
the lords of the beings which live under heaven," etc. 
This formula, so purely spiritual, occurs times with- 
out number: "I wish hither with praise," or this 
other, " I invite and announce to the Lords." ^ 

So often is this simple ceremony alluded to in the 
Avesta that one might easily conclude that the con- 
secration of water, the emblem of purity, and the 
blessing of the twigs, which were the emblem of life, 
was the only rite recognized in the Avesta. But 
that was far from being the case. There were more 
elaborate sacrifices of bread, of flesh, and the haoma 
juice. These being properly arranged by the priest, 
the hymn of praise to the immortal gods, whose name 
was legion, was begun. 

Sometimes a victim gayly decked was led to the 
altar and sacrificed by the attendant priest, but for 
the most part the sacrifices were bloodless. 
^ Spiegel, Avesta. 



ZORO ASTRIANISM. 213 

One of the finest hymns was to Haoma, who is 
worshiped as a god, while the haoma juice is poured 
from a silver to a golden cup. 

The tenth hymn of the Ya^na begins with an ex- 
orcism : — 

Away shall then the Daevas hasten which are here ; 
away the male, away the female Daevas. 

At the beginning of the morning-dawn I praise thee 
with words, O Intelligent, whilst I seize the branches. 

At the forthcoming of the morning-dawn I praise thee 
with words, O Intelligent, whilst I slay (the Daevas) with 
the strength of a man. 

I praise the lofty mountains where thou, O Haoma, 
growest. 

Manifestly thou art the seat of purity ; increase thou my 
speech. . . . 

Haoma increases when he is praised, therefore is he 
who praises him the most victorious. 

Away vanishes the impurity brought hither, out of 
such a dwelling, wherever one brings in, wherever one 
praises, the healing Haoma. 

Easy is the knowledge of Haoma. 

Haoma, give me of thy remedies, on account of 
which thou art (known as) the giver of remedies. 

1 submit myself to thee as the great dispenser of wis- 
dom. 

Praise be to the Haoma, for he makes the soul of the 
poor in greatness like that of the richest. 

Then spake Zarathustra : Praise to the Haoma created 
by Mazda I Good is Haoma created by Mazda ! Praise 
to the Haoma ! 

And take this ninth Ya9na : — 

Haoma gives to those who as mighty ones make teams 
to hasten, horses, might, and strength. 



214 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Haoma makes manifest to those who are maidens and 
were long unwedded a spouse, who quickly sues, and is 
endowed with good understanding. 

Haoma is lord of the house, of the clan, of the confed- 
eracy, of the region, through his holiness ; also lord of 
wisdom. I invoke thee for strength, for victory, for the 
body, as very pure nourishment. Come hither with a 
weapon for the pure to protect the body, O golden Haoma.^ 

Now let us not hastily conclude that this is a vul- 
gar drinking-song sung at a heathen orgy, — far from 
it. It was a hymn in praise of the Iranian Diony- 
sus, if you will, but he was praised by men who felt 
that they were wrestling ''not with flesh and blood, 
but against principalities and powers, wdth spiritual 
wickedness in high places." They promised to slay 
the Daevas " with the strength of a man^'' but they 
knew that that would not suffice, — they needed 
the strength of a God. Under the influence of the 
haoma juice they lost the sense of sin, and so con- 
cluded that they had become pure. " Thou art 
manifestly the seat of purity," they sang. Filled 
with the glory of Haoma they cried, " Thou makest 
the poorest as the richest." We, who have come to 
associate Haoma with the spirit of evil, must re- 
member that in its exhilaration the Iranian, like the 
Greek, found the fittest symbol of the glory of hu- 
manity filled with the divine, — and more, identified 
that which had such power to make the coward brave, 
the weak strong, the dull wise, and the poor rich, with 
God who so blesses his children. 

Let us turn now to the gods, — see what these 

1 Spiegel, Avesta. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 216 

people thought of them and what they expected of 
them. 

Amongst a pastoral people we should expect to 
find pastoral gods, and so it was. One of the chief 
gods was Mithra. H^ is praised again and again in 
the hymns. Mithra, the god of vigilance, — with a 
thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, he watches 
specially over the wide pastures of the people, 
doubtless because their chief property was in land, 
and so arose the idea of honesty. Mithra is the di- 
vinity who witnesses contracts, and, finally, it shall 
be before him that the departed soul shall stand and 
answer whether he has been faithful on the field of 
life to his fellow-man. 

It is only by remembering this early agricultural 
and pastoral proclivity that we can understand the 
frequent hymns to Tistrya — Sirius — the dog-star. 
The dog is to the Iranian shepherd what the horse 
is to the Arabian Bedouin. Heavy penalties are 
decreed for all who injure him, and " Tistrya, the 
faithful watch-dog of the heavens, is praised as the 
shining, the majestic one, who goes round about 
bestowing great joy." 

Next to Mithra stands Craosa, the hearer. His 
special watch is just before the dawn, when heaven 
and earth hold their breath to listen. Before him, 
too, shall the soul appear. Mithra sees what we 
have done in the open day, but Craosa hears what 
has been whispered in the ear. 

The tribunal is completed by Rasnu, the inflex- 
ible judge. For what they did and said and thought 
the Iranians were taught they must give an account 
at the day of judgment. 



216 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Time will not permit us to name more of the Ira- 
nian gods, nor would it be profitable. The heavens 
and earth swarm with them. It is an innumerable 
company; but high above them all sits Ahura- 
Mazda. The eternal, the omniscient God of gods 
and Lord of lords, the Holy Spirit, the creator of 
light and goodness, Ahura-Muzda — better known 
to us by the Persian corruption Ormuzd — sits above 
heaven and earth crowned with light.-^ 

The question may be asked, how does all this dif- 
fer from any of the mythologies ? How does it differ 
from the religion of the Vedas ? And the answer is 
to be found in that fundamental conception of God 
and of man which lay back of their mythology. 

The Iranians seem to have brought with them-* out 
of their conflict with the Indian Aryans a most pro- 
found veneration for truth and purity. There was, 
as we have seen, a god who watched over contracts, 
to whom men must give an account after death. 
There was no special god of purity, because it was 
considered the very essence of divinity. It was a 
characteristic of all the gods. Thus the twelfth Vis- 
pered (or hymn) begins : ''To Ahura-Mazda an- 
nounce we this Haoma uplifted. To him the good 
ruler, the pure^ to him the ruler over the lords of 
parity," and again : " The Fravashis (that is the 
spiritual image of the pure) we praise ; Craosa the 
victorious praise we; the pure man praise we." ^ 

The first Ya^na contains sixty-eight verses, each 
an invitation to a different god to be present at the 

1 L^Hoviqtie, 2 Spiegel, Avesta. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 217 

sacrifice, and the title ''Lord of purity," or "the 
pure," occurs thirty-eight times ; and so it is in most 
of the hymns. 

In the seventh Ya^na, which is a long one, nearly 
every verse begins with the words " with purity I 
offer" the sacrifice, — and so examples might be 
multiplied, without end. 

No one can read the Zend-Avesta without feeling 
that the Iranians, more than any people in the 
world, would have welcomed the beatitude of Jesus 
as the justification of their whole religious life. 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God." To live a pure life, then, and a true life, 
seemed to the Iranian the best thing on earth, — 
that soul shall pass at death safely over the bridge 
Chinvah, pass by the fearful dogs that guard it, and 
stand undismayed before the judges Mithra, Craosa, 
and Easnu. 

Certainly this is a moral advance from Vedaism, 
In some respects it is better than Judaism. 

But we find a spiritual progress, too, in the Ira- 
nian conception of man's relation to the world as 
compared with Vedaism. The daily conflict between 
light and darkness the Indian looked on as a specta- 
tor, — an interested one, it is true, one who hoped for 
the triumph of light ; but the Iranian felt that he 
was a partaker in this conflict, that nature's strug- 
gle was but an outward and visible sign of a spirit- 
ual conflict, in w^hich he must fight for light and 
truth and purity against spiritual darkness and lies 
and uncleanness. 



218 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

"Purity" was to the disciples of Zoroaster what 
" righteousness " was to the children of Abraham. 
Righteousness means right relation with Jehovah. 
Those who would have us believe that it is to be ex- 
pressed by any such word as " conduct " have tried 
to understand Judaism without St. Paul's commen- 
tary on it. Undoubtedly right " conduct " would be 
the manifestation of righteousness, but a man might 
be " righteous " who was guilty of very dreadful 
lapses in " conduct," as was David, who yet was a 
man after God's own heart, because not his conduct, 
but his motive^ the aim of his life, was right, and 
that right was the result of his " righteousness ; " 
i. e., his right spiritual relation with God, conceived 
of not at all as " the Eternal making for righteous- 
ness," but as a merciful king living above the sky, 
with whom David believed that he could talk, and to 
whom he believed he could sing. " Renew a right 
spirit within me," said the penitent Psalmist, for 
righteousness was right spiritual relation to Israel's 
king and father. 

In the same way the " purity " of Zoroastrianism 
was something more than restraint from impure acts, 
it was a right relation of man with himself, an in- 
ternal harmony, something far nobler than the Greek 
conception of harmony, even the rule of the intel- 
lectual and the moral over the material and the sen- 
sual. The result of purity, we are told, is the power 
of seeing God ; that internal harmony, which sensu- 
alism does more than anything else to destroy, is the 
means of the revelation of God, because God can 
only truly be seen by man in himself, and the stained 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 219 

mirror of an impure life can never reflect the bea- 
tific vision of the saints. Yet purity alone was not 
the end of religion, but rather a means to the high- 
est religion; nor is "righteousness" alone enough; 
righteousness must manifest itself in purity. So we 
see that Israel had a part of the truth, — the more 
important, it is true, because the thing of utmost im- 
portance is not "conduct," but a right relation with 
God ; but Persia had another part of the truth, and 
that was the doctrine of purity, without which right- 
eousness would, ere long, become that of the scribes 
and Pharisees. 

Before considering any further the doctrines con- 
tained in the Zend-Avesta it would be well for us, 
at this point, to retrace our steps a little and see how 
it was that the representatives of righteousness and 
purity were brought together. It is a marvelous 
story, — perhaps without its equal in history. 

We are all familiar with the story of the Semitic 
progress in the knowledge of truth, beginning with 
the Chaldean Sheik Abraham, reaching the zenith of 
its material grandeur in David, whose dominion was 
"from sea to sea," and its spiritual splendor in the 
visions of Isaiah ; but the true meaning of the his- 
tory of the people of Israel did not appear until they 
were brought under the influence of the Iranians, of 
whom, perchance, Abraham had known in the days 
of old. 

Imagination must play a large part in filling up 
the outline drawn by tradition in the history of the 
Iranian people. The first nation formed from the 



220 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

migrating hordes of Iran, of which we have any- 
sure testimony, is the Medes. There is a tradition 
that they soon overspread the low lands of Mesopo- 
tamia, till then inhabited by the Semites. When 
they lost their hold upon the south we do not know, 
but we find them finally established in the northern 
kingdom of Media. This, then, is the first kingdom 
in which Zoroastrianism found its home. 

It was at this time far simpler than we find it 
later, as recorded in the Avesta. Whether its dual- 
ism had been developed at this time it is impossible 
to say, but it was latent in it from the beginning. 
For as a failure to rise to the consciousness of per- 
sonality leads inevitably to pantheism, so an intense 
belief in human personality, unmodified by a belief 
in some " atonement " of the human and the divine, 
leads to dualism. As soon as man becomes conscious 
of sin, he becomes aware of his distance from God. 
Unless he can in some way be assured that, in spite 
of sin, he is still one with the Divine, he will seek to 
find some evil principle under whose power he will 
believe himself to be, and then a divorce between 
the human and Divine is complete. 

There seems to be no reason to think that Zoro- 
astrianism had reached this stage of development at 
the time of which we now speak ; for, had that been 
the case, w^e should expect to find greater influence 
than there is trace of as a result of the inroad of the 
Scythians, under whose dominion the Medes now fell. 

The religion of the Scythians was Magianism, that 
is, the worship of the material elements of nature, — 
not as all people have more or less venerated them as 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 221 

the best symbols of almighty power, but as the power 
itself. The chief of these powers was fire, and to 
that the highest worship was paid. 

This worship of fire was attractive to the Medes 
in two ways : in the first place they could not imagine 
a more perfect symbol of irresistible purity, any- 
thing that so well expressed their belief that the 
power of Ahura-Mazda was irresistible. It had also 
a link with the past. It was the earliest rite of the 
Aryan people, and had served in the days of old as 
a bond between the heavens and man, — the only 
thing man possessed which had power to mount up 
to the dwelling-place of God. 

But it was a descent from the high plane on which 
Zoroaster had stood, strong in the same faith which 
had made the Hebrew Sheik the friend of God ; and 
its evil effects were soon seen. 

The early Iranians had burned or buried their 
dead, but now fire was thought to be too pure to 
touch the corrupting body ; the earth also was one 
of the original elements of nature and might not be 
defiled ; so too was water, and consequently the cus- 
tom of exposing the dead to the vultures soon be- 
came a distinguishing mark of Parsism.^ 

But the Scythian influence did not stop here. In 
order to keep the fire burning on the mountain-tops, 
and to decide what in nature was clean and unclean, 
there was a need of priests, and the Magians stepped 
in to fill a place which their own doctrine had cre- 
ated, for before this Zoroastrianism had been as free 
from a hierarchy as the patriarchic congregation of 

^ Dnimmond's Origi7ies, vol. i. 



222 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Israel. Such seems to have been the history of Zo- 
roastrianism ; the early belief in the Invisible God, 
who is pure and loves the truth, and with whom men 
must fight against evil, was overlaid by nature wor- 
ship, by a sense of the necessity of a priesthood, and 
confused by subtle distinctions between the clean and 
the unclean which the trained casuist alone could de- 
cide.^ 

But a better time was coming to save them from 
the corruption which must soon have succeeded this 
mongrel religion. 

A fresh horde of Iranians poured into Media, and 
under the leadership of Cyaxares threw off the 
Scythian yoke. Had they thrown off the Scythian 
influence their history and that of the world might 
have been changed. But the new king was bent on 
conquest and turned from truth to power. 

We need not follow the history of Media further. 
The only event that concerns us after this is the fall 
of Nineveh, hailed with such grim delight by the 
Prophet Nahum, and all the weary exiles for whom 
he spoke. His description of the Median assault, 
and the ignoble crumbling of that great Mammon- 
worshiping Assyrian empire which had crushed Da- 
mascus and Samaria in order to get the trade of 
Tyre and the commerce of Egypt, is Homeric in its 
simplicity and passion.^ 

After that Media loses interest for us. It be- 
comes in turn a great conqueror. It invades Lydia, 
it turns back and enslaves its brethren of the com- 

1 Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies. 

2 See Sayce's Aricient Empires* 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 223 

mon Iranian blood. But here it met its death. In 
558 B. c, Cyrus, a prince of the royal blood, threw off 
the Median yoke, and organizing with consummate 
skill a fresh band of Iranian emigrants overthrew and 
conquered the Median empire, and took up the work 
that Media had failed to do, as " Cyrus the Persian." 

For twenty years the work of conquest continues, 
until, in the year 538, he turns his face southward 
and marches to the siege of Babylon. 

The prophecy of Nahum had prepared the inhab- 
itants of Jerusalem to expect deliverance from the 
Medes, but the fall of Nineveh was the occasion for 
the rise of the Chaldean empire, far more dangerous 
to the safety of Jerusalem. 

When Jerusalem fell it seemed to the Jews as if 
God had forgotten them, but the events which fol- 
lowed the first twenty years of their captivity seemed 
destined to change that fear into certainty. 

The Median povv^er which had promised so well 
did nothing for the captives of Nineveh, and kept 
on in its triumphant course far north of Babylon. 
Well for the history of the world it is that it did : 
for the corrupted Magianism had no treasure for Is- 
rael. When, however, Cyrus the Persian arose, the 
representative of pure Zoroastrianism, he was hailed 
by a prophet whose words have been incorporated 
into the prophecy of Isaiah as the " servant of Je- 
hovah." The unnaturalness of Isaiah's prediction of 
Cyrus's reign, which was once thought to be so essen- 
tial to the truth of Christianity, has served to obscure 
the really supernatural character of the faith of the 
Unknown Prophet, who could welcome this Iranian 



224 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

conqueror as a man called by God. The twenty 
years which pavssed between the revolt of Cyrus and 
the siege of Babylon must have seemed to the peo- 
ple who groaned beneath the burden of the Chalde- 
ans as sure a proof of the failure of prophecy, as did 
the railing of Rabshakeh to their fathers in the day 
when Isaiah said the city " shall not fall." But again 
the prediction of a man of faith, that is of spiritual 
insight, was shown to be true. Cyrus came at last 
and the city fell, and he who had been hailed as the 
servant of Jehovah by the prophet declared that 
Jehovah was his God.^ 

The fall of Babylon takes rank in history with the 
sack of Rome, and the French Ke volution — one of 
the three great crises which introduces a new order. 

Both Hebrew and Greek tradition unite in ascrib- 
ing to Cyrus all the virtues which should adorn a 
noble prince, so that all that we know of his charac- 
ter tends to justify the faith of the great proj)het that 
he was the servant of Jehovah. 

However the decree recorded in the Bible may 
have been colored by Hebrew predilection, there 
seems no reason to doubt that in giving permission 
to the Jews to return to Jerusalem, Cyrus felt that 
he was obeying the will of Him whom the Jews 
called Jehovah. It could not have been otherwise 
when we remember that the whole strength of the He- 
brew people had been tested in the struggle against 
the worship of the images of their cruel conquerors, 
and that Cyrus was the very embodiment of the 
^ Ezra i. 1-4. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 225 

spirit of iconoclasm. It was here that the two re- 
ligions found a meeting point, and a further ac- 
quaintance only served to show the kinship between 
the spirituality of Zoroastrianism and the true wor- 
ship of Jehovah. And here we find another ex- 
ample of that which meets the thoughtful student on 
almost every page of history : the truth that the eter- 
nal law is working out the good, though so often it 
seems as if it must have been deflected by the power 
of evil. We have already seen that Nahum had 
hailed the Median triumph as bringing safety to 
Jerusalem as well as revenge to Samaria, and that it 
failed to accomplish his hope. Had it done so the 
Jews would have been brought in contact with a 
phase of Zoroastrianism so debased by Magian in- 
fluence that it could only have served to harden 
them in their belief that God had no care for any 
people save those in Israel. But when Cyrus ab- 
sorbed the Median power he restored the pure reli- 
gion of Zoroaster, and it was to that that Judaism 
was akin. Even as it was, they came near to de- 
struction by the Magian influence, as we find in the 
reign of Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus, when, 
during the Egyptian campaign, the false Smerdis 
revolted and reestablished the Magian religion, the 
influence of which was felt even in Palestine ; for it 
was by his order that the petition of the Samaritans 
was received, and the work of rebuilding the Temple 
at Jerusalem was stopped. On the triumph of Da- 
rius, the work was renewed, and the Jews were as- 
sured of the support of the great king, who revived 
the worship of the earlier Iranians, and suppressed 

15 



226 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the foreign rites which had crept in during the Ma- 
gian power. 

These facts it is important to bear in mind, if we 
would rightly estimate the influence of Persia upon 
Judsea. 

That the Jews actually borrowed from the Per- 
sians is not likely. It seems probable that the theory 
of Kuenen ^ is the correct one : that the Jews, hav- 
ing been absorbed into the great Persian empire, 
were naturally influenced by the prevailing religious 
thought of the time, which in its fundamentals was 
so akin to their own, and consequently had the seeds 
which had lain latent during the Captivity quickened 
by the genial warmth of the Persian sympathy. 

The first effect of Persian influence is seen in 
the service of the synagogue. Of course, when the 
Temple was destroyed the rise of the synagogue 
was inevitable, if the people were to be kept in re- 
membrance of the great things which God had done 
for them, and if their children were to be instructed 
in the law. But we can well believe that at best it 
must have seemed to the men who wrote the Psalms, 
so full of devotion to the Temple and its service, but 
a temporary makeshift. Yet we know that when 
the opportunity was' given to rebuild the Temple 
but a small part of the people took advantage of the 
decree. Why was this ? Not, I think, because they 
had lost interest in the religion of their fathers, as is 
sometimes supposed, for they continued till the fall 
of the Persian empire to hold the most friendly re- 

^ History of Israel. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 227 

lations with their kindred in Palestine, and yet to 
have had no desire to return. Now no one who 
reads the last chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah can 
doubt that if the decree of Cyrus had been promul- 
gated by Belshazzar the whole people would have 
availed themselves of that which, at that time, would 
have seemed to them most essential for the proper 
worship of Jehovah. Certainly we do not exercise 
too great a liberty when we say that this was the re- 
sult of their contact with a people who had no tem- 
ple, but believed that God was a spirit and must be 
worshiped not on the Mount Zion only, but in every 
place in spirit and in truth. The flight of Jonah 
from the land of Israel, in the belief that in that 
way he might escape from the eye of the God of 
Israel, and the refusal of the captives to return and 
rebuild the Temple are two great landmarks which 
show the spiritual progress of the chosen people. 
So read, the tears of the old men who had seen the 
first Temple were not called forth alone by the infe- 
riority of the later building, but also by the " New 
Theology," which was seen to affect even those who 
had returned to the promised land. The later Tem- 
ple never became to the Jews what the old Temple 
had been to Israel. The real worship of the Jews 
in Palestine, as well as of those of the Dispersion, 
was the synagogue worship. How essential that 
was for any real growth in religious thought every 
student of history knows. It was in the synagogue 
that Jesus taught and worshiped ; it was the Ca- 
tholicism of the synagogue that Jesus opposed to 
the sectarianism of Samaria; it was in the syna- 



228 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

gogue that the gospel was first preached by Paul, 
and it was after its simple family worship that the 
service of the earliest Christian churches were mod- 
eled. And all this was originally fostered by the 
people who could not think of God as dwelling in 
temples made with hands. 

Closely connected with the synagogue there be- 
gan to be felt what we call personal religion, that 
sense of personal relation to Jehovah which could 
come only after the idea of a nation in communion 
with Him, had taken deep root in the national con- 
science. The latter, we may say, was the fruit of 
all the experiences of the nation from the day they 
came out of Egypt till they were carried away cap- 
tive, after which they were never again an indepen- 
dent people. 

But the loss of national independence was more 
than compensated for by the revelation of personal 
freedom. The book of Ezekiel is full of this idea 
of personal responsibility : " The soul that sinneth it 
shall die." " When the wicked man turneth away 
from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive." ^ 
How much such a spirit would be encouraged by 
contact with the Persians we can guess from a 
remembrance that Zoroastrianism was essentially 
a religion of individualism. Righteousness, as we 
have seen, was the burden of the prophets of Israel ; 
but righteousness had sunk at the time of the Cap- 
tivity to mean union with a nation chosen by God. 
Purity was the gospel of Zoroastrianism, but purity 
is essentially personal. 

^ See Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish ChurcL 



ZOROASTPJAXISM. 229 

Where can we find this more beautifully ex- 
pressed than in the Khordah-Avesta, a later growth, 
no doubt, and yet a legitimate one, of the original 
Zoroastrian thought. 

I repent of those sins which burden the conscience ; as 
to see sin and not warn him who does it : to teach evil ly- 
ing, and inspire doubts of the good : to do harm to any 
one : to take anything by fraud ; to say there is no God ; 
to turn from repentance. 

Which I suppose means to turn from the repentant 
man. 

I confess the sins against father, mother, sister, brother, 
wife, and child. 

I confess that that which was the wish of Ormuzd the 
Creator, and I ought to have thought, I have not thought. 

That which was the wish of Ahriman and I ought not 
to have thought, I have thought. 

And yet they too hoped to be justified by faith, for 
they added to their confessions : — 

With all good deeds I am in agreement, and with all 
evil deeds I am not in agreement. May Ahriman be 
broken, may Ormuzd increase.-^ 

That thought is most strongly emphasized in the 
prophecy of Malachi. The messenger of the Lord 
is to sit as a refiner, but who can abide the day of 
his comiug ; what individual can stand before him 
who will try the sons of Levi ? 

That is the last thought in the Old Testament, a 
promise that a new day is coming, but a day pre- 
ceded by the return of a spirit like his who said, 
" /, even I only am left," and '^ Choose you this 
1 Spiegel, Avesta, and Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv. 



230 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

day whom ye will serve." With that cry of Elijah 
so long hushed by centuries of ecclesiasticism, the 
New Testament opens. " The axe is laid at the foot 
of the tree. Every tree that bringeth not forth 
good fruit is to be cast into the fire." Think not to 
say in such a crisis we are the children of Abraham ; 
the hard heart which yields to God's influence rises 
up a child of Abraham. Behold the Lamb of God 
which taketh away the sin of the world is to each 
individual in the world what the paschal lamb was 
to each individual in the families of Israel. 

This intense individualism was the necessary 
preparation for the belief in personal immortality 
which was the glory of Zoroastrianism, and which 
appears as a leading point in the theology of Israel. 
No doubt there had gradually been creeping into 
the minds of the most serious men in Israel a sus- 
picion that death was not the end of the soul's re- 
lation to Jehovah ; but that was quite a different 
thing from the strong conviction of the Persian that 
death is but a crisis in the moral struggle in which 
the pure in heart shall come off victorious. The 
suspicion of immortality was deepened into cer- 
tainty by Israel's contact with Persia. No one can 
compare the Psalms written before the Captivity, 
such as the ninetieth, with the book of Daniel, for 
instance, without being struck with the great pro- 
gress which has been made in the knowledge of 
God's will concerning his children. And this hope 
of immortality also served to quicken their sympa- 
thies with surrounding nations. The book of Dan- 
iel and the still earlier book of Malachi show this 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 231 

change most clearly. The author of the book of 
Daniel felt that all the great movements of the hu- 
man race were tending to establish a kingdom not 
of Israel, but of humanity, of the Son of Man. 
Malachi declared that in every nation there were 
those who were oJffering incense and a pure offering, 
and that among the Gentiles the name of Jehovah 
was being magnified. 

It was after the Captivity, too, that there was re- 
vived that beautiful belief in the appearance of the 
angels who accompany Jehovah, which had been a 
mark of the earliest belief of Israel, but which had 
gradually disappeared as God was more and more 
thought of as separate from his people. 

So far we find nothing except what was good re- 
sulting from the contact of the chosen people with 
the disciples of Zoroaster. But whether it was that 
Zoroastrianism fell again under the influence of the 
Magians, or whether it simply deteriorated as the re- 
sult of its own prosperity, we cannot tell ; certain 
it is that the later effects of Zoroastrianism upon 
Israel were most disastrous. That these results 
were not incorporated into our Bibles is not due to 
accident ; they are a part of the Apocrypha still ac- 
knowledged as canonical by the Roman Church, but 
not by the Protestant Churches, for the Reformers 
knew that the teachings of the Apocrypha were for- 
eign to the pure religion of Israel. They are akin 
to that ecclesiasticism which was the result of the 
contact of the Jews after the close of the canon with 
the degenerate religion of Persia, after it had ceased 



232 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

to be a power for good in history. It is worth while 
to examine the dates of Persian history after the re- 
turn of the Jews from Captivitj^, for in no other way 
could we feel so strongly the influence of a guiding 
hand in the destinies of the people. Babylon was 
taken by Cyrus in the year 538 B. c. Two years 
later the Jews began to return to Jerusalem. Da- 
rius came to the throne in 522. He openly propa- 
gated the religion of Zoroaster, and encouraged the 
Jews to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. The 
Temple was dedicated in 516. When the Jews 
departed from Babylon the empire was at the height 
of its power. Six years later, 510, occurred the ex- 
pulsion of the Pisistratidse from Athens, which led to 
the Persian war. The battle of Marathon was fought 
in 490, and after that Persia ceased to be a power. 
Here, then, is a remarkable fact, that the Persian 
empire was a power while it was giving its treasures 
to Judaea, but as soon as that was done its useful- 
ness seems to have ceased. To one who believes 
that the Jewish nation was the divinely - elected 
medium for the Incarnation, the reason for the Per- 
sian existence is seen when, having been led to Baby- 
lon, they have poured the pure stream of Aryan 
theology into the strong current of Hebrew faith, 
purifying and spiritualizing it. 

If, now, we ask what it was that prevented the 
Aryan religion from supplanting the Semitic, the 
answer is its superstition, St. James, in describing 
Jehovah as seen in the light of Jesus' life, said, " He 
is the Father of light, in whom is no shadow." It 
has been thought that that was the creed of Zoroas- 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 233 

ter himself. However that may have been, the belief 
was early held amongst the Iranians that Ahura- 
Mazda had a shadow, and that this shadow was not 
the darkness which always lies outside the line of 
humanity's vision of the divine, but a veritable sub- 
stance, the great rival of the god of light, to whom 
they gave the name of '' Aiira-Mainyu," or " Ahri- 
man." 

As Ormuzd had attendant divinities, so Ahriman 
was surrounded by an innumerable host of devils, 
whose delight it was to perplex and hinder the work 
of goodness. This opinion entered into every de- 
partment of life. The earth was created, not as the 
Hebrews believed for the delight of God and man, 
but only as a means of thwarting the sinister designs 
of the devil, by localizing, as we should say, the evil. 
The next step was to divide all things on earth into 
two classes of clean and unclean. The result of that 
was to make an endless list of perfectly arbitrary 
rules for purity. It was the end of freedom. The 
only science the Persians studied was astronomy. 
The stars were pure, but the earth was not. The 
earth being the spot on which the devil is to be van- 
quished, Ormuzd did not dwell thereon, but apart 
from the world. His will was known by the revela- 
tion which he had made once for all to Zoroaster. 
The religious consciousness of Zoroaster became, 
therefore, the standard for all time. The Koran is 
no more sacred and infallible to the Moslem than 
the Zend-Avesta was to the Persian, and for the 
same reason, it was a revelation given once for all 
by an absent god. He will come again from the dis- 



234 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

tant heaven to judge the world, but he will come as 
man, — Sosios, the son of Zoroaster, the savior of 
the world. 

Let us sum up now the cardinal points of this 
creed and compare it with Christianity. 

First, then, we find a belief in two rival deities, 
the conflict between whom led to the creation of this 
earth as a means of localizing evil. 

Secondly, a belief that once in time a revelation 
was made, but that never since has God spoken to 
man. The ascription of all the parts of the Zend- 
Avesta, though written at different times, to Zo- 
roaster only serves to emphasize this belief. 

Thirdly, the hope that some day this absent God 
will return in the form of man as a savior. 

And lastly, the conviction that purity is the means 
by which, in that day, man may be found acceptable. 

It was this last point that gave strength to the 
Iranian religion ; for though it made formal distinc- 
tions, yet at the same time it was searching, and in- 
sisted upon cleanness in the inward thoughts. The 
fire that burned up all that was foreign to itself was 
the best symbol of this all-exacting virtue. 

But if one wished to find a proof that morality 
cannot succeed in long floating a system of theology 
which hinders progress, he has only to study the 
religion of Zoroaster, which, with the purest mo- 
rality of any of the old religions, yet gave up its 
treasures by an irresistible law of attraction to a 
miserable race of slaves, and crumbled to the dust 
on the first touch of Greek free thought. And yet 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 235 

this philosophy is the one that is popularly sup- 
posed to most resemble Christian theology. That 
it has had a most powerful influence for evil upon 
Christianity we are only beginning to understand. 
We have spoken of the spiritual influence of Per- 
sian thought upon the Jews, but that spirit was 
materialized. It was probably under the influence 
of later Persian thought that the compilers of He- 
brew literature ascribed so many writings of dif- 
ferent dates to the old hero-emancipator, Moses, and 
so taught the people to find the proof of the in- 
spiration of the Pentateuch, not in the quickening 
of the spiritual life under the influence of a living 
Spirit, but in the mere historical association wdth a 
man to whom they knew God had spoken. The re- 
sult of this is seen in the cessation of " inspired " 
writings soon after the return from Babylon. 

It was at this time, too, that the doctrine of an evil 
spirit, the rival of Jehovah, first appears in Hebrew 
thought. And this belief grew more strong as the 
thought of an absent God gained ground amongst 
the people. Then followed the belief in a material 
resurrection, the conscience of man demanding that 
by some process this impure matter should be puri- 
fied. And last of all came the belief that the Mes- 
siah would come with a sign from heaven, — a visible 
witness that the absent God was drawing near to 
earth. 

These were some of the degrading beliefs which 
the Jews held when their religion had hardened into 
an ecclesiasticism, under the government of the high 
priests, far nearer kin to the debased Magianism 



236 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

than to the spiritual worship of the prophets. It 
was at a time when they had long lost all faith in a 
living God in the midst of the congregation. 

Yet these beliefs which show their influence more 
or less in the book of Daniel appear still more in 
the book of Tobit, and became the very life of the 
Talmud, and were the sum and substance of the 
orthodox belief at the time of Jesus, the " tradi- 
tion " which He continually denounced. The wash- 
ing of the outside of the cup and platter was the 
parody of the purity of Zoroaster. 

The question of Jesus' relation to the popular be- 
lief of his day in demons is not one we can enter 
into here. That there are other beings beside human 
beings in the kosmos capable of resisting the divine 
influence is an opinion that no one may presume to 
dogmatize upon. That they may have an influence 
upon human life as diabolic the false accusers of 
man to man, and God to man, has much to commend 
it. But the opinion which once was taught, but is 
now falling into well - deserved contempt, is the 
mediaeval notion of a rival to God, whom God has 
to plan to defeat ; a notion that was born of the 
Manichean speculations of the early Christian cen- 
turies, which were themselves the offspring of Per- 
sian dualism. But at the idea of rivalry, which is 
the essence of dualism, the Gospel strikes in the mys- 
terious story of the temptation of Jesus, where we 
read that the " devil said unto him, All this power 
will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is de- 
livered unto me; and to whomsoever I will ^ I give 
it. . . . And Jesus answered, and said unto him, Get 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 237 

thee behind me Satan." ^ Such an answer would 
have been impossible for the Persian, because he be- 
lieved the lie that all power was given to Ahriman, 
and that to whomsoever he would, he could give it ; 
but Jesus, when brought face to face with that opin- 
ion, utterly repudiated it, and said, " Get behind me, 
Satan," the first step towards that sublime statement 
of humanity's position on earth, afterwards described 
when He said, " All power is given unto me in 
heaven and earth." 

Look now at that second article of Persian faith, 
the revelation to Zoroaster and the subsequent si- 
lence of the divine voice, an opinion that had such 
a blighting effect upon Hebrew development, that 
under its influence the mighty voices of the proph- 
set ceased, a hierarchy took their place to witness 
to the distance between man and God, the scribes 
came to expound the sayings of a dead God, and 
the Pharisees arose to decide where the burning 
fire of God's righteousness had passed when it 
had been last seen on earth. Now look at Jesus 
preaching to the peasants in the synagogue of Naz- 
areth. He is no scribe expounding a dead law ; He 
is a man speaking with that authority which can 
give an account of itself, to the majesty of which no 
miracle can add ; the authority of one who speaks 
the things he has heard from God. Under the in- 
fluence of that life sacred literature revived. Hu- 
manity, as represented by those who came nearest 
to that life, felt itself under an irresistible impulse 
to cry aloud the glad tidings that God is living 
1 St. Luke iv. 6, 8. 



238 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

amongst men. The belief has never failed through 
all these ages that humanity is being led by the 
Spirit of truth into truth. 

The belief that the Messiah would come like the 
Persian Sosios from heaven, breaking through the 
visible vault that hid God from man's eyes, — - this 
is the sign that the Jews were always asking for. 
" Show us a sign from heaven," and that was the 
sign that Jesus always refused to give. If they could 
not recognize the divine life when it stood beside 
them, He would give no sign which would confirm 
the orthodox heresy that God's coming to man was 
the return of an absent king. The object of the in- 
carnation was to lead men to see that the divine life 
which had always been among them was now mani- 
fested. That the true meaning of the incarnation 
was not seen at once, that old prejudices fell off little 
by little, is only what we should expect. That the 
full meaning of it is not appreciated yet, that every 
advance in the history of man has only served to 
throw new light upon it, will surprise no one who 
believes the birth of Jesus Christ to have been the 
supreme act of history, the explanation of the past 
and the prophecy of the future. 

Now one of the first effects of that notion of an 
absent God which sprang up in the Christian Church 
as the result of a revival of a debased form of He- 
braism, and the influence of the dregs of Zoroas- 
trianism which still lingered in Asia Minor, was 
seen in the prevalence of the belief in the superior- 
ity of the ascetic life.^ God had made the world, 

^ See Histoire du Gnosticism^ par M. Jacques Matter. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 239 

and left it, and now the devil ruled, therefore the 
less we had to do with life the better. It was dual- 
ism working itself out into practice that produced 
that monstrosity of asceticism which Theodore Par- 
ker said was the daughter of atheism and sensualism. 

It may seem as if the subject of this chapter had 
been forgotten, which is the relation of Zoroastrian- 
ism to Christianity ; but indeed just as one who 
wished to study the true meaning of Wycliffe's com- 
mon-sense religion would have to go to Bohemia to 
see how it burned, like great lumps of sea coal, un- 
der the influence of the southern character, or as one 
who would judge of the best fruits of the political 
French writings in the eighteenth century would 
have to leave the Bastile and the Place de la Con- 
corde and stand on Bunker Hill or in Independence 
Hall, so he who would see the outcome of Iranian 
theology must leave the Euphrates and stand beside 
the Jordan and the Tiber. 

We have seen how much Jewish thought was in- 
debted to Iranian spirituality, and how the continu- 
ance of the Hebrew religion was the justification of 
that spiritual faith, but it remained for Christianity 
to justify the essential element of Zoroastrianism. 
The necessity of purity for a knowledge of God 
had been from the beginning the conservative force 
of the religion of Zoroaster. And this Christ justi- 
fied, not by simply adopting it after the method of 
eclecticism, but by deepening its meaning and show- 
ing upon what it is dependent. " Blessed are the 
pure in heart," said Jesus, " for they shall see God." 



240 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

If these words had come down to us as the saying of 
an unknown teacher, we might well have concluded 
that he had felt the influence of the Iranian reli- 
gion ; but they are the words of one whose life is a 
witness that a purity which is not a formal cere- 
mony, but a living principle of the heart, is depen- 
dent upon the constant seeing of God. The life of 
Jesus is the counterpart to the Beatitude, Blessed 
are the pure in heart, and they that see God are 
pure. One of the disciples felt this when he wrote 
that the effect of the full vision of God would be 
similitude, " we shall be like him, for we shall see 
him as he is;" and another formulated the very 
Augsburg Confession of spiritual freedom when he 
wrote, freeing the Christian Church forever from 
arbitrary distinctions, " to the pure all things are 
pure." 

But as this purity was not to be a matter merely 
of ceremonial observance, neither was it to be pro- 
duced by the observance of any rules. It was to 
be the effect of the consciousness of an indwelling 
Spirit of holiness, the highest gift of God. 

Zoroastrianism had begun with some such thought. 
As long as God was thought of as communing with 
man, so long had purity been a state of the spirit. 
When God was thought of as absent, purity clung 
to ^' observances." The whole history of religion 
shows that the two go together : the worship of an 
absent God must be the "tithing of mint, anise, 
and cummin;" the service of the immanent God is 
" mercy, judgment, and truth." By the gift of the 
Spirit, Jesus insured the purity of his Church. 



ZOROASTRIANISM. 241 

Out of that faith in the power of purity, that of 
the possibility of individually knowing God, sprung 
a faith in the everlasting existence of the life that 
had talked with God. Crudely as that belief may 
have expressed itself, grossly as it may have become 
materialized, it may be questioned whether the resur- 
rection of Jesus could have found acceptance, had 
not Zoroastrianism prepared a nidus for that belief. 
But the resurrection of Jesus, whatever may have 
been its physical aspects, was invariably spoken of by 
its witnesses as the fulfillment of the law of Christ's 
being. " It was not possible that he should be holden 
of death." It was declared both by Peter and Paul 
in their first recorded sermons that Jesus was the 
Christ, the Anointed Man, of whom it had been said 
of old that He could not see corruption. Or, as it is 
more strongly put by St. Paul elsewhere. He was 
declared to be the Son of God " with power, accord- 
ing to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection 
from the dead ; " in other words, it was in accordance 
with the spirit of holiness (which includes Hebrew 
" righteousness " and Persian " purity ") that Jesus 
rose from the dead. That which the Psalmist had 
declared to be the law for the Son of David, the 
disciples of Zoroaster had taught was the reward of 
each man's struggle against evil, and that faith 
the Son of Man justified. Justified it as He did the 
Hebrew faith in righteousness, by showing that it 
was a far nobler and better thing than any reanima- 
tion of the flesh ; even a life which exceeds in glory 
and power the present life more than mature man- 
hood surpasses trembling infancy. Of the Son of 
16 



242 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

Man even it was said, in reference to his Resurrec- 
tion, This day have I begotten thee ; as if the life 
that the earth had seen was nothing as compared 
with the life that burst upon Him who had been 
dead and was alive again. 

The part played by Zoroastrianism in preparing 
the world for the resurrection must not be over- 
looked, for it is its greatest glory. It was the first 
religious system to feel the power of personality, and 
proclaim that it was a spark of the divine flame 
which should neither be " blown out," nor absorbed 
by the consuming fire. 

Zoroastrianism has been called Oriental Puri- 
tanism. I would prefer to call it the John Baptist 
of the Ethnic prophets. In some respects it was the 
nearest to Christianity, and in others it was the far- 
thest removed. It was destined to decrease while 
that must increase. Christianity could not deliver 
it from the prison-house of superstition ; but when 
it sends asking, " Art thou that which should come, 
or do we look for another," the answer is, " For this 
cause was the Son of God manifested, that he might 
destroy the works of the devil," and " Blessed are the 
pure in heart, for they shall see God." It says this, 
not as a rival system of philosophy, but as the wit- 
ness to a life which revealed the power of humanity 
to conquer sin, and the reality of humanity's dream 
of " seeing the King in his beauty," in the " power 
of an endless life." 



CHAPTER IX. 

"THE PERVERSION OE THE GOSPEL." 

As we look back over the path which we have 
marked, we see that the early Aryan religions were 
feeling after an answer to great questions, to which 
the Christian Church, influenced by the spirit of 
Christ, believed that they were answering in that 
summary of the Christian faith called the Apostles' 
Creed. To the first article of that creed Vedaism 
brought its problem of creation, saying. We know 
of the divine as omnipresent and kind. But Jesus 
knew the divine as the immanent creative power, — 
no blind force, but an everlasting Father upholding 
all things by the power of his will. 

In Brahmanism we found that the divine was con- 
ceived of less as a principle of matter, and more 
and more as a spiritual image, immanent in man and 
recognizable by man's spirit, and that true bliss con- 
sisted in the union of the divine image in man with 
the indestructible essence of life. But we saw, also, 
that this divine essence was impassive, — having no 
power to effect this union. To the aspiration of 
Brahmanism the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, quick- 
ening the latent image, inspiring with the hope of 
reaching the measure of the stature of Him who is 
the perfect image, leading to a union which is the re- 
conciliation of a son and a father, comes as a gospel. 



244 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

We have seen how Buddha, looking on the sorrow 
of life, declared that there could be no escape save 
by the cessation of desire. That the fiction of per- 
sonality was at the root of all delusion, and that if 
men would but free themselves from delusion by de- 
taching themselves from life they should enter a per- 
fect peace where they would desire nothing. We 
saw how Christ came with as profound an apprecia- 
tion of sorrow as Buddha, but that He declared it 
was inherent not in life^ but in the " world," — that 
existence in which there is no consciousness of the 
Father. He said that He was come that men might 
have " abundant life," and that the pathway to life 
lay, not through the deadening of sensibility, but 
through the death of selfishness. And yet, with all 
his hatred of selfishness. He so magnified the glory 
of personality that He opened a heaven of endless 
progress in the knowledge and love of God, which, 
He declared, was eternal life. 

We saw, also, in the inevitable revolt from the 
nihilism of Buddhism, the rise of Hindu theism, 
with its Shiva, the God of life and death, and 
Vishnu, the preserver. Into sympathy with that 
more profound religion we saw that the Church 
could enter, because it has the Gospel of the Word 
made flesh, which justified humanity's faith in its 
own divinity, and revealed God as a character essen- 
tially Christian, — like Shiva, the giver of life and 
death ; like Vishnu, the preserver. "And this gospel 
is not a story of some Avatdra^ a sudden and tem- 
porary descent into a human form to effect a spe- 
cific purpose, but the history of the Incarnation, 



''THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 245 

which has revealed the mysterious power which re- 
deems human nature from death and sin. 

Lastly, we retraced our steps to the starting-point 
of Aryan history, and followed the Iranian revolt 
against Aryanism to the time when it yielded up its 
treasures of spirituality and purity to Judaism. But 
we saw the weakness of Zoroastrianism, too, — the 
arbitrary distinctions between right and wrong, its 
absent god, its completed revelation, its hostile power 
of evil. We found that Christ set his seal to its 
inherent truth, but repudiated the parasitic growths 
which had well-nigh strangled it. And that these 
might never hinder the truth again He called to- 
gether a Church, an assemblage of the faithful, who 
w^ould '' judge all things " in the consciousness of the 
power of the indwelling Spirit of truth, and in hope 
of eternal life through Him who had been dead and 
was alive again. 

Compare, then, the results of Vedaism with the 
Christian faith in the Fatherhood of God, Brahmanic 
aspiration with the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, Budd- 
hist despair with the story of the Cross and Resur- 
rection, Hinduism with its "feeling after" Him who 
is not far from any of us with the doctrine of the 
Incarnation, Zoroastrianism with its purity so inade- 
quate with the belief in the Communion of saints, 
and then ask how it came to pass that a peasant of 
Galilee inspired men with a faith which reveals Him 
as the desire of all nations. 

The anomaly of that character cannot be too 
often insisted upon in questions of this sort, and yet 
that character itself cannot be rightly appreciated 



246 HIS STAR IN THE EAST, 

if it be considered only in its manifestation in the 
three years of Jesus' ministry; we must look to his 
body the Church if we would see what Jesus' life is. 
For in some way it came to pass that the Church 
was founded. A company of men and women 
were called together. Some overwhelming emotion 
awaked in them the consciousness that they were 
nearer to Jesus and saw more clearly the Father 
than in the days when Jesus was visible to the eye. 
No doubt they were unable to explain this until 
Paul appeared, and declared that it was because the 
same Spirit which had sanctified Jesus was an in- 
herent part of human nature. This thought was car- 
ried on by John, and the Christ-Spirit was declared 
to be the portion not only of the Christian, but " the 
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world." So that the difference between the Christian 
and the non-Christian was not like the difference 
between the Buddhist or the Zoroastrian and the 
Brahman, — the difference vv^hich exists between the 
members of various sects ; it was simply the differ- 
ence between one who knew what relation humanity 
bore to God and one who did not know it. We hear 
a good deal about the corruption of the simplicity of 
the Gospel by the speculations of philosophy, but it 
was not until the Gospel had been " corrupted " by 
St. Paul that the Church began to understand that 
Jesus had not died and risen in order to form a sect 
in the midst of Judaism, but the Catholic Church. 
And that was absolutely a new thought in the his- 
tory of mankind. None of the religions which we 
have considered every dreamed of a church, much 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 247 

less of a Catholic Church. Buddhism came the 
nearest to it, but we have seen that it soon was com- 
pelled to draw a line between the secular and the 
consecrated life, and establish religious orders to 
realize what it was admitted man was unequal to. 
And even had that not followed, Buddhism at the 
best could never have attracted the West ; for the 
characteristic of the West is activity, which is the 
deadly sin of Buddhism. If it be answered that 
Christ violated instincts of humanity as deep as that 
for activity, — as in his teaching concerning , re- 
venge, — the answer is that He never violated an 
instinct of humanity. 

No doubt it seems as if He did, but if by an in- 
stinct of humanity is meant such an ingrained senti- 
ment — no matter what its origin — as is capable of 
progress, then with revenge as with all other things 
Jesus was " set for the falling " before there came 
the ''rising of Israel." Revenge in its brutal form 
is the desire to inflict suffering because of suffering 
caused, but it is only transfigured revenge which 
cries, ''Father, forgive them ! " There is an instinct 
in the human heart which demands that evil shall not 
triumph over good. The man who has lost that has 
lost an essential part of his humanity. The simplest 
way of preventing the triumph of evil is the infliction 
of some punishment which will equal that inflicted, 
and so prevent the preponderance of evil ! But Christ 
revealed a better way when He said, " Pray for them 
that despitefuUy use you and persecute you." And 
under the influence of that spirit revenge, v/hich 
was the protest against the triumph of evil, gave 



248 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

place to the enthusiasm for conversion, which is the 
demand for the coming of the kingdom of God. 

The Catholic Church, then, is nothing less than 
the calling of humanity to realize its humanity in 
the Spirit of Jesus. And that it cannot be too 
often repeated is a new thought, a veritable gospel 
to mankind. 

But the Church could never have been built up 
had it not been that individuals had already, in part 
at least, realized that life which the Church was to 
declare to be the true life of humanity. The record 
of those Christians before Christ, found in the Jew- 
ish Scriptures as in the literature of no other peo- 
ple, the Christian Church took with it, and said that 
that which had been realized in narrow bounds and 
in partial ways by a people who felt the presence 
of God must be realized more perfectly by men 
and women who had been brought by other ways 
to the knowledge of the truth. 

For a long time that was the only Bible the 
Church had : when the Apostle went to the syna- 
gogue he reasoned out of that; when he went to 
those to whom it was unknown he spoke of God's 
message which comes in the falling rain and the 
warming sun, or he turned to the poetry with which 
they were familiar, and led them through that to 
God. But this new experience of the indwelling 
Spirit was producing a literature which was to be 
more precious to the world than the Prophecies and 
Psalms. The epistles to the churches soon were 
found to be of larger application than had been sup- 
posed. The Philippians were addressed as men, and 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 249 

in this gospel to men there was a lesson for every 
man. Then as the eye-witnesses passed away it was 
felt that the tradition of Jesus' life must be gath- 
ered before it was too late, and in the Gospels there 
was embodied the portrait of Him who walked 
among men and made them know that they had 
seen the image of God. Thus our Bible grew, and 
it became, together with the Church, the great wit- 
ness to the truth. The one witnessed to the imma- 
nence of God in society, that gathering together of 
individuals in a common faith which we call the 
Church ; and the other witnessed to the immanence 
of God in the unpremeditated aggregation of men 
in the nation, — God in history ; while the life of 
Jesus, recorded or unrecorded, witnessed to the im- 
manence of God in the individual because in hu- 
manity. That is the threefold witness which is to 
convince the world* 

And now the question which may well be asked, 
and to which it is hoped this book will give some 
sort of an answer, is this : If Christianity be the 
satisfaction of the great human needs and wants as 
expressed in the religions of the world, why has it 
failed to conquer the world ? It has not conquered 
it. Europe and America are nominally Christian ; 
but Central Asia is Mahometan, while from the Gan- 
ges eastward Buddhism is the religion which has 
absorbed all the rest. Yet for fifteen hundred years 
Christianity has been helped by the wealth, the 
material power, and the intellectual ability of the 
world. Its Founder gave it a world-wide commis- 



250 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

sion. It began with a missionary spirit that seemed 
destined to sweep the world with its enthusiasm, but 
it did almost nothing in the East, Its triumphs were 
chiefly in the West, and now its force seems spent ; 
it is not converting the heathen, and it is with dif- 
ficulty that it holds its own against the advancing 
tide of intelligence in Europe and America. Why 
is this ? 

It ought not by any means to be admitted that 
all that is implied in these objections is true ; on the 
contrary, it might be possible to show that the mis- 
sionary spirit of the last twenty-five years has done 
an apostolic work, but it is best to place before our- 
selves as clearty as possible what it is that is being 
said against the religion of Christ, and recognize that 
it has power, because we ourselves feel that there is 
truth in the objection that we are not doing what we 
ought to be doing. But the important question is 
not, Are we doing what we might do if we entered 
more fully into the spirit of Jesus ? but. Has that 
spirit so spent its force that it is not possible that 
intelligent men should be inspired by it to-day as 
they were eighteen hundred years ago ? 

To answer all that such a question implies would 
necessitate the writing of the history of the Church, 
but these few facts should be remembered in any 
such discussion. 

In the first place, the Gospel was, as Paul said, a 
" treasure in earthen vessels," and the first mistake 
of the Church was when the Roman Empire was 
allowed to gild those vessels with flattery. In that 
day the glory of serving gave place to that of ruling. 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 251 

But the Church had hardly seated herself in her new 
empire, had hardly time to show whether the Chris- 
tian spirit could predominate over the traditions of 
the past, before the storm of the barbarian incur- 
sion fell upon her. No greater proof of her vitality 
could be educed from history than the fact that when 
the storm had subsided the Church alone, amid the 
wreck of principalities and powers, lifted up her head. 
But the sight that met her gaze might well have ap- 
palled the stoutest heart ; the civilization of cen- 
turies destroyed, and half-naked savages, drunk with 
their titanic orgies, the masters of the world. That 
Christianity should have survived such a day of 
judgment, that the Bishop of Rome and his brave 
clergy could ever have had the faith to begin the 
rebuilding of the world, is sufficient proof of the 
vitality of the faith of Christ in the year 452 A. D. 
The conversion of the barbarians to Christianity 
was a wonderful, but to us a most unsatisfactory 
piece of work. Of course, if we were shut up in a 
block-house on the frontier with a drunken savage, 
we would try to tame him before we began to convert 
him. Now the truth seems to be that the Church was 
so glad to get the barbarians tamed that she com- 
promised there and called them converted, consecrat- 
ing all their ceremonies which were not immoral, and 
alas ! absorbing many of their superstitions. The 
consequence was that mediaeval Christianity was 
composed of three elements ; the simplicity of the 
gospel of Christ, the imperial policy of Rome, and 
the barbarian superstitions. The Reformation was 
the great national protest against the imperial pol- 



252 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

icy of Rome, and a religious protest against the 
barbarian superstitions. The full meaning of the 
political revolution we know now means that which 
the authors of it never dreamed it could mean, — de- 
mocracy. The goal of the religious movement, we 
are only now beginning to see, is the liberty of the 
sons of God. 

So then when any one brings it as an objection 
against Christianity that it has spent its force, the 
proof being that the early missionary triumphs of 
the Church were greater than our own, it must be 
remembered that the Church had had no time to 
free herself from the seductions of the state alliance 
before the incursion of the barbarians occurred ; and 
that from that day till the Reformation mediaeval 
Christendom was what the author of the " Continu- 
ity of Christian Thought " calls a " parenthesis in 
the larger record of the life of Christendom." ^ 

It may be asked why more has not been done 
to convert the world since the Reformation. The 
answer is that far more has been done than ever 
before. More Christians have been made in the 
past one hundred years than in any six hundred 
before. Perhaps this cannot be said of the number 
of converts^ but the question cannot be decided by 
statistics ; for no one who considers what the life of 
Jesus was supposes that the converts made by the 
Jesuits in Canada or by Xavier in Japan are to be 
counted among the triumphs of the cross ! But 
the real reason why more has not been done since 
^ The Continuity of Christian Thought, by Alex. V. G. Allen, D. D. 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 253 

the Reformation is that the Reformation is not yet 
finished. Up to this time its work has been largely- 
negative. Its positive work has yet to be done, or 
rather completed. For of course nothing could be 
more positive than the English Revolution, the Amer- 
ican Revolution, and even the French Revolution, all 
of them the outcome of the Reformation. 

Nothing could be more positive, also, than the 
scientific effects of the Reformation ; but when I 
speak of its negative results I mean theologically. 
The reason why its results have been so positively 
good in politics and science is that they were born 
as the result of that great labor, but theology had 
been held in bondage, and has not yet been set free. 
The Reformation will not have finished its work 
until the spirit of dogmatism has been put down. 
And when I say dogmatism I do not mean agree- 
ment in the acceptance of certain facts, — nor even 
in opinion about those facts ; in that sense dogma- 
tism is an essential element in human society ; but 
when I speak of dogmatism, I mean the spirit that 
insists upon intellectual agreement in regard to de- 
tails which in the nature of the case we must be 
ignorant of, as, for instance, the exact condition of 
the dead ; which discourages historical criticism be- 
cause there is supposed to be a fixed tradition con- 
cerning the canon of Scripture which may not be vio- 
lated ; which decides that scientific discoveries must 
be held back until the scribes have examined the text 
of Scripture to see whether the admission of truth is 
"safe;" which, in fine, would turn the Church into 
a club, into which no one may be admitted whose 



254 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

intellectual condition is not entirely satisfactory to 
every member, and which makes the acceptance of 
metaphysical speculations upon inscrutable mysteries 
the test of fellowship with Him who said, " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden," and 
" If any man is coming toward me I will in nowise 
turn him back." That spirit has been the shadow of 
Protestantism, and prevented the power of the great 
religious revival of the sixteenth century from being 
felt. Is that spirit on the increase or not ? It is 
on the decrease. This new and fashionable spirit 
of agnosticism has certainly done this good. It has 
made men ashamed of their dogmatism. The theo- 
logians have been like two heated disputants, and 
agnosticism, instead of taking sides, has simply said, 
Neither of you know anything about the matter. It 
has stopped the dispute ; it has set men to thinking 
as to the grounds of religious certitude. It has led 
multitudes to feel that the truth of any spiritual 
announcement is to be proved, not by an external 
miracle, nor by an unbroken tradition, but by the 
immediate response of the human soul to that an- 
nouncement. As Maurice has well said, " Conscience 
is not the measure of truth, but it is its tesL''^ 

No doubt agnosticism itself may become dogmatic. 
It has done so. It has asserted with the old odium 
tJieologicum that God is unknown and unknowable. 
But we need not be troubled by its dogmatism ; we 
may be sure that it has become dogmatic, because it 
has no new message. For I suppose it is always 
true that men become dogmatic when they are con- 
scious that they have nothing new to say, and so fall 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 255 

to reiterating the old statements until they gain a 
certain sanctity which they never had in the early 
days when they were only the preliminaries of some- 
thing better. No one who can read the signs of the 
times at all can fail to see that the Christian spirit, 
so far from being hurt by the dissolution of dog- 
matism, has really begun to feel the pulse of a new 
life. It is the old fond delusion, that a captive bird 
would die if set free in the forest, that leads men to 
think that Christian liberty needs the cage of dog- 
matism. History shows that it does not need it. 
When the Reformation has done its work it will 
be free. 

But dogmatism is only the intellectual symptom 
of a disease of which institutionalism is the eccle- 
siastical. The bane of the Roman Church has been 
institutionalism, with all its materialistic philosophy 
of a spiritual effect to be produced by a material 
act. That heresy has prevented the heroism of the 
Jesuits from bearing its legitimate fruit. Xavier 
and Loyola and other Catholic missionaries devoted 
themselves to enrolling their converts in a visible 
army, trusting to the organization to effect a change 
of heart and life. The bane of Catholic missions, 
rooted as they are in institutionalism, has been poli- 
tics. Owing to the heroic labors of Xavier, Japan 
was at one time nominally almost a Christian coun- 
try, but the wicked attempt of the Jesuits to place a 
so-called Christian prince on the throne of his father, 
the heathen Mikado, led to a revolution which appar- 
ently ended in the martyrdom of thousands at the 
rock of Pappenburg in the harbor of Nagasaki. But 



256 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

that was not the end ; a prejudice was produced 
against the religion of Christ which is only begin- 
ning to give way to-day. Indeed, it is said that in 
the interior of Japan crosses are still set up on the 
Tokaido, and the little children are taught to spit at 
them as expressive of the utter detestation by the 
people of the religion that they warmed in their 
bosom, and like an adder stung them. Institutional- 
ism has been the bane of the eTesuits. But the day 
of institutionalism is waning. The American Revo- 
lution was the dawning of a new day, when the in- 
strument of the divine power was no longer to be 
sought in an ancient institution, but in the federa- 
tion of individual men inspired with the hope of a 
great purpose. That dawn was obscured by the clouds 
of the French Revolution ; it may be retarded by the 
sycophancy of Teutonic socialism or the madness of 
Russian nihilism ; but it is sure to come, and those 
who live to see that day will find that the religion 
of Christ has again the opportunity which it once 
had, and which the institutionalism of Rome and 
the dogmatism of Geneva have prevented it having 
since to influence individual men and women con- 
scious of the true glory of humanity in the life of 
the Son of Man. 

But dogmatism and institutionalism are them- 
selves symptoms of a deeper evil, and that is sec- 
tarianism. Now it was against sectarianism that the 
Reformation protested ! That great truth has been 
obscured by historians, because they were confused 
themselves about the matter. For what is the es- 



" THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 257 

sence of sectarianism ? Is it not tliat spirit which 
denies that salvation or truth or virtue can be had 
out of a certain section of the Church ? Well, where 
did that spirit ever manifest itself as in that section 
of the Church which was ruled by the Bishop of 
Rome ? It was against that sectarianism that the 
Reformation protested. 

In France that protest took the scientific form of 
reconstructing what was supposed to be the original 
organization of the Church, and became Presby- 
terian. In Germany the national mysticism mani- 
fested itself in the preaching faith, spiritual insight, 
as the summum honmn. In England it followed the 
course of the national proclivity, and expressed it- 
self in a conservative government under law, violat- 
ing as little as possible the tradition of the past. So 
far there were, if we may so speak, more sects and 
less sectarianism ; that is, the Christian Church had 
been marked out in certain well-defined lines, but 
there was no attempt to insist that any one of these 
was the norm for all Christendom. It was the Roman 
Church which was full of the old spirit, and insisted 
on its sect dogmas and its sect organization. Had 
the unity which at first prevailed between the Lu- 
theran, Genevan, and Anglican churches continued, 
the world would have been nearer the kingdom of 
God than it now is. But the demon of sectarian- 
ism is not so easily exorcised. First there came the 
sectarian dogmatism of Luther, and then the institu- 
tional sectarianism of Calvin, and then the institu- 
tional sectarianism of Archbishop Laud. Then came 
the second wave of the Reformation, the great Puri- 

17 



258 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

tan revolt. But sectarianism was not yet dead, and 
division has followed division, until it has come to 
be believed that the object of the Reformation was 
sectarianism, and the results must be either the disso- 
lution of the Christian Church, or a return to some 
previous form of belief and organization which all 
will accept. It seems strange that this plan should 
commend itself to thoughtful people. And indeed it 
does not ; that is to say, no thoughtful man thinks 
well of the plan unless it be stated as the return to 
his own denomination. It seems stranger still that 
it is not recognized that any part of the church 
which calls itself the Catholic Church, as distin- 
guished from other parts of it, is only placing itself 
in the unenviable position of Bunyan's " brisk young 
lad coming out of the country of Conceit whose name 
was Ignorance." 

Yet in spite of all this no one can be found to de- 
fend sectarianism ! All are agreed that unity is the 
one thing needful, as indeed it is, but no one need 
dream that unity is to be obtained otherwise than 
as our fathers thought. God had inspired them to 
obtain it by protest against all that makes against it. 
For unity is not uniformity either of doctrine or 
of discipline. We have seen that, and the Church 
scarcely survived it. Differences of opinion are 
essential to active spiritual life, and active spiritual 
, life is essential to morals. Those who ask that men 
should lay aside their theological differences are ask- 
ing they know not what, — a return to that day when 
theology, the knowledge of God, was the treasure of 
a class ; when that day comes there will be a loss 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 259 

of interest in God, a loss of faith in God's revela- 
tion of his character to men, and, consequently, the 
immorality which has always succeeded. Equally 
vain is the dream of one organization. Were it 
obtained to-day it would be overthrown to-morrow. 
What then is the outlook ? Further divisions ? It 
may be. For no unity can be obtained until it is 
clearly seen what is to unite. That only can unite 
which is an integral part of the body. Certainly 
the sects are not that, — neither Roman, Anglican, 
Lutheran, nor Genevan. They are all the work of 
men. The Church is the body of Christ, and the 
memhers of that hody are individuals. Every in- 
dividual in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells is a 
memher of his flesh and of his bones. If that be 
true, all this talk about the sect to which he belongs 
not being a part of Christ's body is apart from the 
question. It ought not to be said that any organi- 
zation is a member of Christ's body. St. Paul told 
the Corinthians that they were members " in par- 
ticular." If then the individual is a " member," he, 
with all others who are so inspired, constitute the 
Church of the living God, and they are one in Him. 
That body, as St. Paul says, cannot be divided. 
That is the unity of the spirit, the bond of peace. 
Any other union would be a bond of discord. What 
then, it may be said, is the value of this unity, if it 
cannot make itself effective ? But it can. In the 
first place, many of the sects will die the day this 
unity is recognized, because at best they have had 
but a galvanic sort of life, the result of the friction 
produced by some " establishment," and will be re- 



260 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

absorbed into some stronger form of life. But of 
those which remain there is no reason why there 
should not be effective unity. If only each would 
forego its claim to Catholicity. Calvinism and Lu- 
theranism, Anglicanism and Romanism, are but the 
expression of great human needs which always have 
existed and always will exist. Let them exist. Give 
up all attempts to proselytize from one part of the 
Church to another, and let Christians as Christians 
unite for the conversion of the world. Let a bap- 
tized man be counted a Christian, and then let 
him worship God and express his belief in his 
Saviour in that way in which God has spoken to 
him. 

But it will be . said we need a common creed to 
express our belief ! Well, we have it. Every man 
who calls himself a Christian believes in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. But there, it will be said, is the dif- 
ficulty. One thinks of him as '' God over all blessed 
forever," and another as only the best of men. How 
can those two commune together ? Why not ? Are 
we sure that Matthew and Paul and John could 
have drawn up a creed that would have satisfied 
each in all respects? Are v/e sure that each dis- 
ciple meant the same thing when he assented to 
Peter's confession, " Thou art the Son of the living 
God"? 

And if not, do we believe in truth, and think that 
it will not make itself known to men through men ? 
Are we afraid that the Unitarian will convert the 
Orthodox, or do we believe that Unitarianism is an 
anomaly, and that it has always appeared in certain 



''THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 261 

conditions, and will reappear again in like condi- 
tions ? I have placed in the forefront that question 
which of all others stirs, and rightly, the hearts of 
Christian people. But if that can be seen to be 
solvable, then no other ought to trouble us. We 
ought to be able to eat the bread and drink the cup 
with any disciple in the presence of Him who is our 
Saviour and our King. No more reason is there that 
we should refuse so to do than that we should refuse 
to look on the rising sun with one to whom it spoke 
only indefinitely of promise and hope, while to us it 
was the veritable witness that God was living and 
lighting his people. 

That this is the unity which St. Paul praised when 
he wrote, " In him is neither barbarian, Scythian, 
bond, nor free, but Christ is all and in all," seems 
too plain to need argument ; but if not, indeed there 
is no argument that will convince any man, because 
it goes down to the eternal question. What think ye 
of Christ ? If Christ accepts a man as a follower, 
can those who have Christ's spirit refuse his com- 
pany, or make conditions which he cannot accept 
without the violation of that conscience which has 
led him to Christ ? Of course there will always be 
" groups " of disciples, but this " grouping " is not 
schism ; that is the deadly sin of resisting the Spirit 
of Christ which alone makes us members of his 
body. 

The effect of such a unity as that of which I 
speak would be seen at once in missions. It would 
be recognized that there are in heathendom poten- 
tial Methodists, Anglicans, and Calvinists, and that 



262 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

when they become Christian they will inevitably fol- 
low their predispositions. Therefore we should be 
content to carry them the gospel in its simplicity, 
and encourage them to organize themselve on the 
lines of that division of the Catholic Church which 
seems best to answer the needs of their nature. 
That simplicity was the characteristic of the Apos- 
tles' method seems clear enough. They told the story 
of Jesus' life, and when men felt themselves drawn 
to that life they said, " It is the revelation of the 
character of God," and into the name and character 
of God they baptized every man who said, " I be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ." The secret of their success 
lay in their simplicity. 

How they would have dealt with differences among 
their converts we may learn from the way in which 
they dealt with them among themselves. Peter and 
Paul and James differed in their understanding 
of the meaning and scope of the Gospel as much 
as Cardinal Manning, Henry Ward Beecher, and 
Bishop Huntington ; therefore they agreed to differ. 
Paul went to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews, 
while James remained in Jerusalem; the only thing 
they had in common was their love for the Master 
of whom they thought so differently. That was the 
second secret of their work : they perceived that God 
had different ways of revealing Himself to different 
men, and no one of them claimed to know all and 
be all.i 

^ Into the question o£ the sectarianism of the disciples of Peter and 
James and Paul the scope of this hook does not permit us to enter ; 
doubtless it was far greater than is generally supposed. That Paul 



"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 263 

That is the spirit of the Catholic Church, and 
when that spirit again prevails the Catholic Church 
which has survived Romanism and Anglicanism and 
Calvinism, which contains them all and is none of 
them, — when that returns, then the world will be- 
lieve that the Father sent the Son to be its Saviour. 
Dogmatism will give place to the love of truth, and 
ecclesiasticism to free organization for the expression 
of a new energy. 

There is one more characteristic of the Apostolic 
method which must be revived before the great 
work of converting the world can succeed. St. Paul, 
who is the ideal missionary, laid it down as a funda- 
mental principle that to the Jew a man must become 
as a Jew, to them that are without law as without 
law, to the weak as weak, all things to all men, that 
he might by any means save some. Which means 
that by the power of that enthusiasm for humanity, 
which was the effect of the gift of the Spirit of Jesus, 
he threw himself into sympathy with the religious 
wants and experiences of the people to whom he 
preached. It is necessary to take but one of the 
many examples of this adaptation which meet us on 
every page in the history of his missionary journeys. 

In that fragment which has come down to us of 
his great sermon on Mars Hill, Paul says not one 
word about Hebrew law and prophets. It begins 

was persistently f oUowed by the Jews of Asia Minor, and to some 
extent by " certain from James," " false brethren," is clear enough. 
How far the overthrow of Pauline Christianity prepared the way 
for the collapse of the Syrian and Asian Church, on the Mahometan 
inroad, is a question yet to be investigated. 



264 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

with the announcement of the revelation of an un- 
known God to the agnostic Athenians ; it goes on 
to speak of the relation of this God to temples, 
to that nation of artists ; it declares the brotherhood 
of mankind to that democratic state ; it announces 
the immanence of God to the fellow - citizens of 
Socrates ; it declares the divine sonship of humanity 
to those lovers of beauty ; it announces a judgment 
by a Divine Man to those idealizers of humanity; 
and a resurrection from the dead to those Greeks 
who loved life well and hated " dark death." And 
this is declared to be the fulfillment not of Hebrew 
prophecy, but of Greek poetry ; he does not quote 
Isaiah, as when he spoke in the synagogues, but an 
ode of Cleanthes. That was the method of Paul, 
that was the secret of his success in Europe, and the 
truth of this will be seen if we turn from the Apos- 
tolic successes to their failures. 

The Apostles were successful all around the Medi- 
terranean Sea, but there are traditions which we may 
not ignore that they went to the far East, and even 
to the land of the Scythians, yet no monument of 
their work is found. Why that should be has never 
been explained. I believe it was because they found 
themselves among a people so far removed from 
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought that they were 
unable to fulfill the first requirement of missionary 
success as laid down by St. Paul. They could not 
place themselves in sympathetic accord with the 
people among whom they were. Surely their labors 
were not in vain. Their example has been a stimu- 
lus in all ages ; but it has been left for our own day 



•' THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 265 

to enter into sucli political and commercial relations 
with the East as to enable us, if we wish so to do, to 
preach the Gospel in India, China, and Japan as 
Paul preached it in Europe. 

The Apostles were successful in their efforts to con- 
vert the Jews who still held to the faith of Abra- 
ham, by answering their demand for righteousness. 
They were successful in preaching to those Greeks 
who had not sunk into utter sensuality, by answer- 
ing their idealism. They converted those Romans 
who were not utterly brutalized, by answering their 
efforts for an universal brotherhood. 

But when they passed beyond the influence of 
Roman, Greek, and Hebrew thought, the advance 
was checked. Why was this ? Because they knew 
God in part and man in part, but not yet nature ; 
consequently when they found themselves in the 
East they came in contact with pantheism, which 
underlies all Oriental thought; with that they could 
not sympathize^ and therefore had to fall back into 
that region in which the chief interest centred in 
humanity. St. Paul's experience, when he was for- 
bidden by the Spirit to go into Asia, was an epitome 
of the Spirit's government of the whole Church. 
It was led westward, God intending that from the 
West the light should turn back again toward the 
East. 

I do not say that no mission work has been done 
in the East : far from it ; but no nations have been 
converted as in the West. Heretofore we have had 
to convert individuals by separating them from the 
national life, and, consequently. Oriental converts 



266 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

have always been more or less unsatisfactory. They 
have rarely been the best type of their people, for 
in the best type the national idea would be strongly 
manifested ; but we have been able, so far, to do lit- 
tle with the national, or perhaps it would be better to 
say the race, idea. If we are ever to convert a na- 
tion or people, it must be by converting individuals 
on the national or race line.^ 

^ The success of the Nestorians in the East is very sugg^estive. 
Nestorius was too much influenced by the dualistic pantheism of 
Gnosticism, but the East recognized in his disciples men who felt 
the majesty of the Divine too profoundly to use the doubtful ex- 
pression '' Mother of God," and who recognized the immanence of 
God so keenly that they shrunk from saying that God was * ' born. ' ' 
Nestorian missions might give the clew to the Church by which the 
Incarnation might be preached in the East. For a statement of 
Nestorius' position, see Milman's Latin Christianity^ vol. i. book ii. 
chapter iii. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE FUTURE OF GHRIST'S RELIGION. 

We have seen, in the last chapter, how the Gospel 
was perverted ; but for that the Church would long 
ago have outgrown the necessary limitations of the 
Apostolic age and converted the world. The ques- 
tion which we need to ask before this work is brought 
to a close is, Are we in any better condition to do 
that than the Apostles Thomas and Bartholomew ? 
We have no new gospel. We have the same mes- 
sage that they had. We must hesitate before we 
say we know the Master better than they. What, 
then, is our advantage ? I think we know the East 
better. We are better able than they to " become 
to the Orientals as an Oriental." 

And that will be more evident if we consider the 
drift of Western thought. 

The great study to-day in Europe and America is 
Natural Science. What has it taught us? 1 do 
not mean what has it taught us about the weight 
of the moon and the distance of the sun, for, as 
Matthew Arnold says, people care very little about 
that ; but the eager world has been crowding around 
the scientist while he keeps his eye to the telescope 
or the microscope, and crying, What do you find 
about God ? No doubt there have been many to say, 



268 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

We have found that there is no God, and the godless 
have cried, " Then let us eat and drink for to-morrow 
we die." But the true scientists have grown more 
profoundly reverent, more deeply impressed with the 
presence of mystery back of all phenomena, year 
after year. No rolling worlds have been discovered 
in this crowded space which are not subject to law ; 
no minutest particle of dust has the microscope re- 
vealed that does not receive and transmit force. 
Now law has no meaning except as expressing or- 
derly arrangement^ and force has no meaning save 
as the expression of the result of the exercise of will. 
Science, then, has banished forever the atheistic no- 
tion of dead matter. There is no such thing. We 
know, says science, no matter that does not reveal 
force and law. Back of all phenomena is mystery. 
No doubt science has been dogmatic, — a necessary 
condition of partial knowledge. No doubt the relig- 
ion of positivism has declared that God is unknown 
and unknowable ; but we do not need, because of 
dogmatism, to reject the truth that commends itself 
to our reason. Whatever science may say when it 
puts on the robes of religion, as long as it remains 
science it declares the immanence in matter of the 
unconscious God as law and force. If science could 
discover the Christian God in nature the Gospel story 
would be overturned, for that begins with the state- 
ment that the divine reason was in the Kosmos, and 
that the Kosmos was made by it, and the Kosmos 
was not conscious of it. 

If we turn to the East we find that the books 
which are most popular to-day are the writings of 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 269 

the positivists, — not, I am sure, because of their 
dogmatism, but because they recognize that which 
the East has always declared : that God is nowhere 
if He is not in nature. One of the best tracts that 
could be distributed in the East would be Words- 
worth's poetry, which is filled with the thought of 
Christian pantheism, which is the doctrine of the 
immanence of God. I say, then, that just in pro- 
portion as we can enter into sympathy with the Ori- 
ental adoration of nature will we be able to preach 
the gospel of the Logos, who was manifested not 
only in nature but also in man. 

What, then, is the outlook for a return to St. 
Paul's sympathy with the religious aspiration of the 
Gentiles? The new science of comparative religions 
is making ignorance of the faith of mankind impos- 
sible. The gradual effect of that knowledge is in- 
structive. Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, 
expressed the feelings of religious people, when the 
spiritual treasures of the East were first opened, by 
saying of the Buddhist ritual in China, " There is 
not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a 
ceremony of the court of Rome, which the devil has 
not copied in this country." ^ 

When that simple theory was abandoned it was 
asserted that the Buddhists had copied from the Nes- 
torian missionaries, — and if rites, why not opin- 
ions ? 

The dogma that truth could come to man only 
through the teachings of the Church drove men to 
^ Quoted in Ten Great Religions. 



270 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

strange expedients. But if any one would appreci- 
ate the change that has come to the Christian tem- 
per in the last century, let him compare these two 
quotations, the first from the Preface to "Paley's 
Evidences," and the second from the Preface to the 
" Sacred Books of the East," by F. Max Miiller : — 

I desire, moreover (says the archdeacon), that in judg- 
ing of Christianity it may be remembered that the ques- 
tion lies between this reHgion and none ; for if the 
Christian religion be not credible, no one with whom we 
have to do will support the pretensions of any other. 

I most heartily agree with that statement, but I 
would be sorry to think it true if by Christianity 
we are to understand Paley's notion of it ; but the 
real animus is to be found in the determination not 
even to consider any other religion. 

Now listen to this : — 

To watch, in " The Sacred Books of the East," the dawn 
of the religious consciousness of man, must always re- 
main one of the most inspiring and hallowing sights in 
the whole history of the world : and he whose heart can- 
not quiver with the first quivering rays of human thought 
and human faith is unfit for it. . . . What we want 
here, as everywhere else, is the truth and the whole truth : 
and if the whole truth must be told, it is that, however 
radiant the dawn of religious thought, it is not without 
its dark clouds, its chilling colds, its noxious vapors. Who- 
ever does not know these, or would hide them from his 
own sight and from the sight of others, does not know 
and can never understand the real toil and travail of the 
human heart in its first religious aspirations ; and not 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 271 

knowing its toil and travail, can never know the intensity 
of its triumphs and its joys. 

Paley would prove the brightness of Christianity 
by comparing it with the darkness of heathenism ; 
Max Miiller would let the glory of Christ's religion 
be judged in the light of the Gentiles. 

One other cause of the poor success of Protestant 
missions may be named. Buddhist and Mahometan 
missionaries have this advantage over Christians, that 
it is an easy thing to practice what they preach, to 
conform to some outward sign. Jesuit missionaries 
have the same advantage over Protestants, that they 
can point to faithful imitation of ecclesiastical 
rites as a proof of conversion. But the Protestant 
goes with the message, " The kingdom of God is not 
meat and drink, but love, joy, and peace ; " and when 
he is asked for examples of Christians, he has to 
acknowledge with shame that drunken sailors, self- 
ish merchants, and godless travelers answer to that 
name. I suppose the one thing a missionary would 
most dread for his convert would be that he should 
visit a Christian land. Such an one would not see 
the patient, heroic, noble lives that are following 
Christ ; he would see the dens of iniquity winked at 
by the law, the degradation of the Christian poor, 
and the selfishness of the rich. He would see great 
armies of men kept from peaceful labor that they 
may defend their homes from Christian neighbors, 
and Christian fleets built to ravage heathen lands. 

Had Christian people as nations sought the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness, the meanness of 



272 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

capital and the grasping selfishness of labor would 
be as impossible as slavery. We have failed to real- 
ize the brotherhood of humanity, and that is why 
we hear in our own land the frantic shriek of the 
anarchist, and see the destruction of life and prop- 
erty in Europe. Men talk about that thing being 
suppressed by force ; they might as well talk of driv- 
ing back malaria into the swamp. The land must 
be drained or the evil will continue, and we may be- 
lieve that Nihilism is our day of judgment which no 
generation shall escape. We may believe that in 
the clouds thereof men shall see the appearing of the 
Son of Man, and that a further step will be taken 
toward the realization of the brotherhood of man- 
kind. 

These are some of the forces for the coming of 
the kingdom of God which are working while men 
sleep, — Agnosticism and Nihilism, Democracy and 
the study of the science of comparative religions. 
There are others which we have not yet spoken of, 
because they are not evidently working against cer- 
tain well-ascertained hindrances to the spread of the 
kingdom, but they are none the less working for it. 

What, then, is the outlook ? I believe that the 
outlook for rational, that is spiritual, that is Chris- 
tian, religion was never so bright as now. Those 
who live in fear that history may repeat itself, and 
that savage hordes may again devastate civilized 
lands, have not learned the lesson of history. That 
is no more likely to happen than the evolution of a 
new type of life, which scientists tell us is finished. 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 273 

What we must look for is a mental and moral mod- 
ification of the highest type — man. If that be 
true, then man is but in his moral and intellectual 
infancy, and Christ has come not at the end of his- 
tory, with but little time left for humanity to realize 
his life, but in the very dawn of history, as soon as 
the infant man could hear the divine voice. We 
need expect no more overturnings of society by bar- 
barians. We know the world ; we know what to 
expect. Macaulay's vision of the New Zealander on 
London Bridge is vain. The world is free to begin 
its development as far as external dangers are con- 
cerned. Its real dangers are internal, and menace 
the religious life. But already we may see the signs 
of better things. The theological and ecclesiastical 
discussions which have broken out afresh after slum- 
bering so long must drive men a little nearer to the 
realization of the unity of the Spirit as they see the 
futility of any unity of compromise. 

In attempting to answer the various objections 
which come to our ears, I would not leave the impres- 
sion that the Christian Church needs apology after 
apology. When it is asked why more has not been 
done, — and that question must be asked by the faith- 
ful disciple, — it is well if we can find how it has come 
to pass that the work has been hindered, and better 
still if we can see the signs of better times, through 
a return to the Apostolic spirit. Both of these I have 
tried to do, because they are essential to an under- 
standino: of the future of Christ's relio'ion. If there 
are any who think that the reasons assigned are not 
the true ones, such would do well to study carefully 

18 



274 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

the history of missiorxs, and see whether the work 
has not deepened and broadened as the better spirit, 
the manifestations of which have been great in the 
last hundred years, has influenced churches and in- 
dividuals. 

Should this spirit prevail still more we should see 
an enthusiasm for missions, such as has never been 
seen in our day ; for the Church would feel that in 
her power to " fulfill " she was destined to great tri- 
umphs in awaking the heathen to an appreciation of 
their own treasures, in the faith that they would not 
rest satisfied in them, but through them pass to the 
discipleship of Him who has the words of eternal life. 

And yet I would not mean to imply that all our 
dangers are behind. They are not. There is great 
danger lest knowledge be divorced from faith. We 
are living in one of the great epochs of history. Our 
children's children will . look back to this day as our 
fathers looked back to the day of Copernicus. What 
Copernicus did for astronomy, Darwin has done for 
natural history. Life can never be the same again. 
The churches may reject the new knowledge, and 
grow hard and narrow. Ecclesiasticism may refuse 
to obey the law of "Divine Providence," and insist 
upon its own willfulness. Disgusted by sectarian- 
ism, thoughtful men may grow indifferent to the 
truth, and thus hinder the progress of the Church. 
But the most dreadful danger is that atheism within 
the Church which denies we are under the guidance 
of the Spirit of truth, which we hear the sound of, 
but cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes, 
only we believe that it is the Spirit of the Father 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 275 

and o£ the Son. These are some of the dangers and 
some of the forces working for the future. And 
when we speak of the forces which are working in 
behalf of the kingdom, we are only speaking of cer- 
tain manifestations of the Spirit's presence in pol- 
itics, in philosophy, and in society ; but we have no 
name by which we can describe that mysterious 
awakening of men's souls in our day to a deeper ap- 
prehension of the work of Jesus, which is more truly 
the characteristic of this age than the facility to 
invent or the enthusiam to discover the secrets of 
nature. 

And now turn from the problem of enlightening 
the theology of heathendom to this still more per- 
plexing question of the elevation of its morality. 

It has often been thought that this is a hopeless 
task, that it is useless to attempt to place before 
men any particular statement of moral worth, be- 
cause there can be no such statement. It is a mat- 
ter of climate, or of food, or political institution, or 
national temperament. That which is considered 
right among one people is thought to be wrong 
among their neighbors. Each nation develops a 
morality which is proved by experience to be the 
most expedient for its peculiar condition. Penalties 
are enacted to insure its enforcement, and public 
opinion " cements a cake of custom" which the indi- 
vidual finds it hard to break. To have a uniform 
morality necessitates a uniform climate, and the same 
food. But the answer to all that is, that nations 
whose climate has remained the same, and whose 



276 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

food has not changed, have made progress in moral- 
ity ; as for example the Jews, whose sacred books at 
one time declare that the foul murder of Sisera, by 
Jael, was an act inspired by God, and later enunci- 
ated principles by the mouth of the prophets which 
show that to them such a deed must have appeared 
as horrible as it does to us. Evidently, then, the first 
thing necessary before we can proclaim a morality 
for humanity is to decide whether there is such a 
thing as sin for humanity. I do not say sins, but sin ; 
for while the estimate put upon different sins may 
differ, the important question is, is there such a 
thing as a sinful condition, of v/hich sins are the par- 
ticular manifestation. 

Let us turn to the Epistle to the Romans. The 
whole idea is that of election, the calling out of the 
spiritual man ; and the whole conflict of life, we are 
there told, consists in the effort of the spiritual man 
to free himself from the " natural " man. Follow- 
ing the Rabbis, Paul declared that the struggling of 
Jacob and Esau in the womb was a prophecy of the 
perpetual struggle between the man of flesh and the 
man of spirit. But he describes the experience of 
every earnest man when he says, " I know that in 
me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing : 
for to will is present wdth roe, but how to perform 
that which is present I find not. For the good that 
I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, 
that I do. Now if 1 do that I would not, it is no 
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 1 
find, then, a law that when I would do good, evil is 
present with me. For I delight in the law of God 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 277 

after the inward man. But I see another law in my 
members warring against the law of my mind, and 
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is 
in my members." 

Here, then, is St. Paul's philosophy of sin. God 
is calling the spiritual man out from the natural 
man ; the conflict of life consists in the holding back 
of the spiritual man by the flesh, which he calls sin. 
He afterwards calls this natural man the old Adam. 
The highest type of the animal life into which God 
has not breathed the breath of eternal life ; and sin- 
fulness, according to Paul, consists in identifying 
one's self with the old animal life from out of which 
God is calling man, until the life becomes again 
" carnal," beastlike. I say we are in a better po- 
sition to interpret that teaching of St. Paul than 
ever before. For science has taught us that man 
has been developed from the lower animal life, and 
that just in proportion as men have obeyed the bet- 
ter impulse they have left behind the old carnal pas- 
sions and appetites. Sin, says science, is choosing 
the lower life from which man has been evolved. If, 
then, sin be defined as willful incompleteness^ it is 
a characteristic of humanity, for there is no man 
who is not conscious that he is below that which he 
somehow dimly feels he might have been. 

But of course there is no gospel in that. There 
is need that we should have clearly before us the 
antipode of sin, and decide whether or not there is a 
holiness which is for humanity as opposed to the sin 
of which every individual is now conscious. If we 
turn to the Epistle to the Ephesians we shall find 



278 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

that St. Paul, who had so emphasized the universal- 
ity of sin, believed that there was a universal holi- 
ness possible for man. 

The word that gives the key to that Epistle is 
" edification " or " upbuilding." Upbuilding to what ? 
" To the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ." What hinders that? The vanity of mind 
of those who, having the " understanding darkened, 
and being alienated from the life of God, have given 
themselves over to uncleanness." But those who 
have " learned Christ " will " put off the old man, 
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and 
will put on the new man, which after God is created 
in righteousness and true holiness." Holiness, then, 
according to him who has defined sin as willful in- 
completeness^ is nothing less than willing complete- 
ness. 

Out of the old beast - like life science and the 
Bible both tell us man is being called, up to a life 
which science cannot name, but which the Bible calls 
the new man, Christ Jesus. 

Of course we have reached now a point where 
argument will have no influence. It is distinctly 
said that the victory which overcometh the world is 
faith. But if it be asked why any one should be- 
lieve that the revelation of Jesus Christ will be to 
men in every nation the unveiling of an image which 
has been dimly before their eyes from the beginning, 
the first reason is that Jesus himself believed it, and 
it was efficacious ; the second is that in proportion 
as the Church has believed it, has she been able to 
build men up to this completeness. There is a deeper 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 279 

reason still, of which we shall speak later. If, then, 
we begin with that faith, we shall see that it is not so 
unreasonable as we may at first suppose. For the 
long history of ethics shows us nothing more clearly 
than this : that men have believed themselves either 
to be driven on to a better life by some authority 
which compelled obedience, or that they have been 
beckoned on by some happiness which seemed to hide 
itself behind some duty. It must be that there is a 
truth in each ; it must be that neither is complete. 
What if Christ really combines the two ? Yet that 
is just what the Church has always believed of Him, 
not because some one has said it, but because indi- 
viduals are continually experiencing its truth. 

The description given of Jesus satisfies these two 
conditions, " full of grace and truth." To one man 
it was the grace which appealed ; to another, it was 
the truth that was in Him. It was the " grace " re- 
flected in the face of Philip which drew Nathanael 
to him, but when he drew near he saw the " truth." 
The poor wretches who brought the sinful woman 
into his presence slunk away because of the penalty 
of his awful majesty. The heart-broken penitent 
crept to his feet, because she loved the grace of that 
perfect holiness. 

But it was not only the method of Jesus which ex- 
hibited these two elements of the power of morality, 
it was in the end which He set before men as well. 
He told of a kingdom within each man ; He spoke 
of violated law and unfailing penalty ; but He filled 
the hearts of men with a longing they had never 
supposed could take possession of them for that 



280 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

peace which is the harmony of righteousness. And 
then He went a step farther, and showed them one 
who was at once King and Father, demanding obe- 
dience and giving happiness ; nay more, identifying 
obedience and happiness. And the law of that king- 
dom also was twofold, — love and loyalty. 

Of course the objection against this statement is 
that no external, arbitrary standard can ever suffice 
for humanity if it is to continue to progress in mo- 
rality; but the truth is that while Jesus begins with 
an external standard, it differs from all others in this, 
that it is the standard of a life, not of a code, and so 
is not open to the objection urged, because the object 
of the external standard is to reveal the internal per- 
sonal standard which is in every man by reason of his 
sonship. Therefore so far from hindering progress, it 
insures progress; for morality having once been iden- 
tified with the love of a son to the Father, the Father 
having been revealed as eternal, the knowledge of that 
love must deepen more and more as the exhibition of 
it becomes more apparent, and the application of it 
must increase as the knowledge of the relation of 
one son to another in the great family grows more 
and more plain in the consciences of men. Therefore 
while it is true that no morality which in its applica- 
tion is limited can ever satisfy the wants of a pro- 
gressing humanity, it is equally true that the morality 
of Jesus can never be insufficient, because it is based 
on the revelation of the identity of the King and the 
Father, ^ on the oneness of duty and happiness, on 
the identity of loyalty and love. This, then, is the 
^ See The Influence of Jesus, by Phillips Brooks. 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 281 

standard of " completeness," the perfection like that 
of the Father in heaven. 

This morality, then, beginning with faith proceeds 
to love and leads on to hope. That last is essential ; 
for the holding up of any standard which either 
threatens penalty or promises happiness is worse 
than useless, if it does not reveal a possibility of 
compliance with its demands. What can be the rev- 
elation which can reveal to man the possibility of at- 
taining to the divine perfection ? Nothing but that 
which is the revelation of Jesus, the identity of na- 
ture between the Human and the Divine. By this 
revelation every man may see himself as his Father 
would have him be. Jesus stands before every life 
as a mirror stands before a child but half awake, — 
the child sees an image which it does not recognize, 
and then, as the light grows clearer, it sees that it 
is gazing on itself. When man sees Jesus, he sees 
himself free from sin, fully alive to his relationship 
to God. So by the power of hope the standard has 
changed from the outside to the inside. There has 
come that which St. Paul experienced : " Though I 
have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth 
I know Him so no more. Christ dwelleth in me; I 
live, yet not I, but Christ which dwelleth in me." 

Surely we have here a morality which is truly 
humanitarian, — a morality which is based on the 
oneness of humanity with God and with itself ; which 
reveals the authority which the soul demands ; which 
gives the happiness that the soul craves ; which re- 
veals a standard by which men may guide their 
steps, by faith in the life which has embodied it ; 



282 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

which shows that the law is within, and that the king 
is within, and that the kingdom is within ; and yet 
opens the vista of an endless progress in the hope of 
the increase of the kingdom as it is enlarged under 
the providence of the Father, until the kingdoms of 
the world are subject to it, and the Son delivers up 
the kingdom to God who is the Father, that God may- 
be all in all. 

But in this progress man does not remain a passive 
instrument. He can yield — and is daily tempted 
to yield — his members as instruments of the old 
carnal life, or he can identify himself with the new 
Man, who has crucified the affections and lusts by 
finding his meat and drink in doing the will of his 
Father. 

It may be said, all this is not pure ethics, but 
ethics mingled with theology. Whether ethics must 
not always be so mingled is a question which we can- 
not enter upon here ; but this we may be sure of, that 
no ethics which have been divorced from theology 
will ever reform the life of the East, for the Orientals 
are above all things theologians : and that is why 
Christian morality will have an attraction for them, 
rather than any system of utilitarianism. It must 
begin with theology — as Christian ethics begin. 

For who is this Son who reveals our sonship to 
us ? Is He too only a product of evolution moving 
to something not yet seen ? The Gospel says not. 

First. In the beginning was the Reason, and the 
Reason was with God, and the Reason was God. 

Secondly. All things were made by Him ; and 
without Him was not anything made that was made. 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 283 

(So too says science, '' Nothing was made without 
law, the expression of Reason.) 

Thirdly. He was in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos 
was made by Him, and the Kosmos knew Him not. 
( So too says science. Nature knows only force,) 

Fourthly. He came unto his own QL e., to men), 
and his own received Him not. (Alas ! how true a 
statement of history.) 

Fifthly. But as many as received Him, to them 
gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to 
them that believe on his name ; which were born not 
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God. 

Finally. The Reason was made flesh and dwelt 
among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as 
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth. 

Here, then, is the message of Christianity to 
humanity, — a message as old as the Church itself, 
but one which we could never fully understand while 
we thought of sin as a positive entity, but, through 
the knowledge of the history of evolution, we have 
come to understand there is the " soul of good in 
things evil." 

With this gospel we can go to the Gentiles and 
say all these differences of morality show different 
stages of evolution out of the beast life to the 
Christ life. Heretofore each nation has been con- 
tent simply to perpetuate its own standard, but now 
you can see one who realized every ethnic ideal, and 
still lifts the standard of moral progress above hu- 
manity. 



284 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

The hospitality and carelessness of the Japanese 
are perfected in the Friend of man, who took no 
thought as to what He should eat and drink. The 
Chinese imitation of the past is idealized in Jesus' 
fulfillment of the past. Hindu patience and Western 
activity were united in Him who was led as a lamb 
to the slaughter, and yet said : " I must work while 
it is day, the night cometh when no man can work." 
And it is only when we so consider the question that 
we come to appreciate the arrogance with which we 
have thought of all God's other children. We have 
actually identified the morality of Jesus with the 
morality of the West ! And yet there is a vast deal 
of Christ's morality — the passive element in it — 
which the West has never realized at all. We hear 
a great deal just now about the impracticability of 
Christ's law of forgiveness and his views of property ; 
but they are not impracticable to the Oriental mind, 
and it was to the Orient that Jesus belonged. Any 
one who will read that beautiful book the " Oriental 
Christ," by Mozumdar, will be convinced that we have 
lost our hold on a very essential element in Christ's 
teaching, and that consciousness will help us to carry 
the Gospel to the heathen, — not the lesson of Eng- 
lish prudence and American smartness, but the law 
of brotherhood in Jesus Christ. The Church must 
show that the morality of Jesus, like his theology, 
comes to individuals at the salient point which they 
have thrown out. 

When that is accepted by the East we shall find 
something more than moral progress as the result. 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGIGN. 285 

We shall find a more distinct spiritual vision. For, 
first, in that seeing of the perfect man there would 
come, as always has come, an enthusiasm for human- 
ity, for they would fall in love with humanity's im- 
age ; and when that took place pantheism would 
cease, for in the light of that life men would learn 
that personal consciousness is higher than imper- 
sonal unconsciousness, and so, under the " grace " 
of Jesus Christ, they would realize their relation to 
a person, even a Father. 

And, secondly, that fear which in the East has 
always been associated with a personal god, because 
personality to them has always had the element of 
fickleness, would vanish, as under the influence of 
that life men began to feel that the secret of Jesus' 
life was unbroken communion with a father^ as it 
began to dawn upon them that this father was the 
Father of all living, and that the assurance of his 
love was to be found not in efforts to hribe Him, but 
in the identification of the individual life with the 
Son in whom He is well pleased. 

And, thirdly, that awful sense of the necessity of 
some atonement for the past would be removed, as 
under the influence of that life men felt that the 
atonement Jiad been made in the revelation of the 
essential unity of the human and the divine, and 
borne witness to, even unto death, by the Son of 
Man, who knew that the transmuting love of the 
Father w^as able to make the sins which were as 
scarlet white as wool. 

And, finally, as the story of the impossibility of 
the perpetual extinguishment of that life by death 



286 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

found its response in their hearts, there would be a 
new hope. Hopelessness has been the temper of the 
Oriental. There was nothing to be gained by prog- 
ress in the manner of life, for life had no future, 
and no future was desirable for a life so miserable. 
Our pulses quicken at the thought of an endless life 
of progress and unwearied activity, for we have be- 
come conscious of an inexhaustible energy, which 
must make itself felt. But no drearier news could 
be carried to the Chinese, for example, than that life 
should have no end. If, then, instead of trying to 
believe that or anything else they could once be 
brought to feel the influence of Jesus' life, they 
would find that ideals had come 'to them which eter- 
nity would be none too long to realize, and in the 
'' power of an endless life " they would experience 
that hope in the unending progress in the knowledge 
of God which is the gift of the Spirit of Truth. 

I have spoken as if the future were certain, but 
there are dangers. No mysterious ones, but ones 
that can be prevented. The first is that knowledge 
may leave faith behind. If that come to pass the 
sin will lie at the Church's door. We are living to- 
day at the beginning of a new age. Life will never 
be the same again. Religion can never be the same 
again. .In the centuries to come men will look back 
on this day as we look back to the days of Coper- 
nicus. Religious thought set itself against the Co- 
pernican theory, and religious thought became con- 
temptible. Religious thought may set itself against 
the law of evolution, but it will only succeed in be- 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 287 

coming again contemptible. We hear a great deal 
about defending the " outworks " of Christianity ; 
but if the " outworks " are exploded theories of his- 
tory, nature, and man, the sooner they fall the 
sooner will that which remaineth the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever be revealed. 

Another danger, which needs no comment, is that 
ignorance may utter itself in dogmatism, and so pre- 
vent the co(5peration of intelligent religious men in 
all that makes for righteousness. 

We have reason to fear lest heathenism, catching 
the materialistic spirit of so-called Christian lands, 
may rest satisfied with " progress." No thoughtful 
man can visit Japan without seeing that they are in 
danger of adopting every foreign extravagance, in- 
stead of developing under the influence of a new 
spirit their own dignity and beauty. 

What Japan needs is the spirit of Christ to call 
forth her inherent glory, and if she fails to get that 
she will become the base imitator of all that is 
crude and uncouth in American and European civil- 
ization. 

I know there are to be heard voices which say it 
is all a dream, Christianity has spent its force. But 
I look backward over history, and the scientist tells 
me that every upheaval of nature, every modification 
in plant and animal, prophesied of the coming of 
man ; that without man the whole scheme of evolu- 
tion would be meaningless. I look over history. I 
see empires rise and fall. I hear prophets amongst 
every people declaring that all the travailing and 



288 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

groaning of humanity is not in vain ; that human- 
ity shall conceive and bring forth a Son, and that 
his name shall be called Emmanuel. I see Jesus, 
the desire of all nations. I see nineteen centuries 
of Christian history, and I learn that it has been 
for the manifestation of the life of Christ. I find 
that this life has not come to men because they have 
progressed, but I find that when it has come they 
have progressed. I find that a handful of Jews ac- 
cepted Him, and as a result there was born the Cath- 
olic Church. The middle wall of prejudice between 
Jew and Gentile was broken down. I find that the 
Roman accepted Him, and the position of women was 
changed. In Him was neither male nor female. 1 
find that America accepted Him, and in his presence 
slavery became intolerable. There could be no dif- 
ference between bond and free in the brotherhood of 
mankind. 

Look back over these 1,900 years, and you find 
that everything has changed, even to the very lan- 
guage of the peoples ; and yet, through it all, with 
the wars of nations and the conflict of churches, 
there has been the unshaken love for and faith in 
and gratitude to that Life which men have believed 
called their souls out of darkness into his marvelous 
light. Under the influence of that Life we find 
three things : a deeper knowledge of the character 
of God ; a stronger enthusiasm for humanity ; and 
a continual progress in the understanding of nature. 
Progress in the knowledge of God, — Father, Son, 
Spirit. 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 289 

And now look abroad. It has been permitted us to 
see the rise and progress of one of the most remarka- 
ble religious movements in any age. I refer to the 
Brahmo Somaj, the theistic Church of India. Be- 
ginning in an attempt to revive the monotheistic 
teaching of certain of the Vedic hymns, it has been 
drawing slowly but surely nearer to the Christian 
doctrine of the perfect manifestation of God in Jesus 
Christ. Space will not permit me to quote extracts 
from the sermons of that remarkable man Keshub 
Chunder Sen; but no one can read them without 
feeling the force of St. Paul's words : '' I know that 
he who hath begun a good work in you will per- 
form it till the day of Jesus Christ." 

I know that it may be said, " That is but one 
point of light in the darkness of heathenism, — it is 
more likely to die out than to spread." But I have 
no such fear, for I have seen, as it were, the parable 
of the spread of the gospel glory in the scenery of 
India itself. 

I once stood on the top of the first range of the 
Himalayas, and saw, across the great valley, the 
mountains of the second range, with the mighty 
Kinchenjunga towering above all. The light of the 
declining moon was only sufiicient to show, at the 
bottom of the valley, the great mist which, like an 
old serpent, lay coiled about the base of the ancient 
hills. And as I stood there, cold and trembling, the 
air was pierced by a bitter cry from a little child in 
the darkness of the valley ; and, while I listened, 
as if in answer to this human cry, the topmost peak 
of Kinchenjunga flushed with a faint pink light, — 

19 



290 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

" the sun has risen," some one cried, and yet the 
world was dark as ever ; but it was true, the mighty 
mountain had seen, afar off, the breaking of the day, 
and glowed and trembled in the new-born light. 
Soon the whole snowy range was ablaze with glory, 
and the arrows of light fell thick and fast, and the 
old serpent was slain, and the valley disclosed in all 
its beauty and peace. So it is true that only here 
and there a prophetic soul, towering like a mountain 
above the common level of our dusk, has flushed 
with glory at the vision of the new day. But we need 
not fear that the light will turn back : the soul that 
knows the power of that Sun of Righteousness knows 
that He will rise with healing in his wings, until the 
old serpent of despair is slain, and the valleys of hu- 
manity glow in the Dayspring from on high which 
hath visited us. 

If, then, I were asked what has Christianity done 
for the early Aryan religions, I would answer, It has 
justified every aspiration of their faith, and has 
opened a vista of unsuspected glory beyond. 

If I were asked what is the future of Christianity, 
I would answer : As humanity increases in wisdom 
and stature, in favor with God and man, the con- 
sciousness of its sonship will grow stronger and 
deeper ; but it will be an incomplete thing while it 
is only Occidental. We shall never know its true 
glory ourselves till East and West meet at the cra- 
dle of Jesus, and the Wise Men say. We have seen 
his star in the East and are come to worship Him. 
Only when the East gives Him its gold and frankin- 



THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 291 

cense and myrrh, shall we of the West understand 
what manner of child this is. 

Already wise men in the East are beginning to 
say, " Where is He that is born the King ? We 
have seen his star in the East." What answer has 
the Church ? Will the answer that any section of 
it may give satisfy " wise men " ? Is not the only 
witness which can convince the world the oneness of 
his disciples? There are many who believe they 
see the nearness of a unity as far nobler than the 
uniformity of medisevalism as is the " federation of 
the world " to the national subjection to the Papal 
See. " It is a hope, cherished by many of the most 
thoughtful and earnest Christians of our time, that 
God is preparing the introduction, at last, of some 
new religious era. . . . What, possibly, is He offer- 
ing, if only we are ready to receive it, but a grand 
inaugural of the Spirit throughout Christendom, — 
an open day of life and love and spiritual brother- 
hood, in which our narrow confines of bigotry and 
prejudice shall be melted away, and all the members 
of Christ's body, holding visibly the Head, shall, 
visibly, own each other ; shining in the light, reveal- 
ing the Spirit, cooperating in the works of Christ, 
and living for the common object of establishing his 
kingdom ? " ^ 

When that comes the Gospel will be preached to 
the heathen with power, and in proportion as it is 
preached will that spirit pervade the Church. 
1 God in Christ, by Horace Buslmell, pp. 279 and 297. 



292 HIS STAR IN THE EAST. 

To have all men see the fellowship of the mystery 
which from the beginning hath been hid in Him who 
created all things by Jesus Christ may seem to some 
a dream, but to those who know Him it is the 

One far off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves. 



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